Tableware
Tableware items are the dishware and utensils used for setting a table, serving food, and dining. The term includes cutlery, glassware, serving dishes, serving utensils, and other items used for practical as well as decorative purposes. The quality, nature, variety and number of objects varies according to culture, religion, number of diners, cuisine and occasion. For example, Middle Eastern, Indian or Polynesian food culture and cuisine sometimes limits tableware to serving dishes, using bread or leaves as individual plates, and not infrequently without use of cutlery. Special occasions are usually reflected in higher quality tableware.
Cutlery is more usually known as silverware or flatware in the United States, where cutlery usually means knives and related cutting instruments; elsewhere cutlery includes all the forks, spoons and other silverware items. Outside the US, flatware is a term for "open-shaped" dishware items such as plates, dishes and bowls. Dinnerware is another term used to refer to tableware, and crockery refers to ceramic tableware, today often porcelain or bone china. Sets of dishes are referred to as a table service, dinner service or service set. Table settings or place settings are the dishes, cutlery and glassware used for formal and informal dining. In Ireland, tableware is often referred to as delph, the word being an English language phonetic spelling of the word Delft, the town from which so much delftware came. Silver service or butler service are methods for a butler or waiter to serve a meal.
Setting the table refers to arranging the tableware, including individual place settings for each diner at the table as well as decorating the table itself in a manner suitable for the occasion. Tableware and table decoration are typically more elaborate for special occasions. Unusual dining locations demand tableware be adapted.
Materials
In recent centuries, flatware is commonly made of ceramic materials such as earthenware, stoneware, bone china or porcelain. The popularity of ceramics is at least partially due to the use of glazes as these ensure the ware is impermeable, reduce the adherence of pollutants and ease washing. In 2020, the global market for ceramic tableware was estimated to be worth $US2.22 billion, with the top five exporting countries being China, Portugal, Germany, Thailand and United Kingdom.Banana leaves are used in some South Asian and Southeast Asian cultures.
Tableware can also made of other materials, such as wood, metals, tempered glass, or plastics. Before mass-produced tableware, it was fashioned from available materials, such as wood. Industrialisation and developments in ceramic manufacture made inexpensive tableware available. It is sold either by the piece or as a matched set for a number of diners, normally four, six, eight or twelve place settings.
Cutlery is normally made of metal, especially stainless steel, though large pieces such as ladles for serving may be of wood. The use of porcelain for spoons is popular in some Asian countries. Chopsticks are made of wood, bamboo, metal, ivory and plastic.
Disposable tableware includes all disposable tableware. These are often made from
paper, plastic, wood or bagasse. Due to environment concerns, single-use plastic plates and cutlery will be banned in England from October 2023. A similar ban has been place in the EU since July 2021. Canada is also planning such legislation. A kulhar is a traditional handle-less pottery cup from South Asia that is typically undecorated and unglazed, and is meant to be disposable.
History
Plates and other vessels
The earliest pottery in cultures around the world does not seem to have included flatware, concentrating on pots and jars for storage and cooking. Wood does not survive well in most places, and though archaeology has found few wooden plates and dishes from prehistory, they may have been common, once the tools to fashion them were available.Ancient elites in most cultures preferred flatware in precious metals at the table; China and Japan were two major exceptions, using lacquerware and later fine pottery, especially porcelain. In China, bowls have always been preferred to plates. In Europe, pewter was often used by the less-well-off, and silver or gold was preferred by wealthier individuals. Religious considerations influenced the choice of materials, as well: Muhammad spoke against using gold at table, as the contemporary elites of Persia and the Byzantine Empire did, and this greatly encouraged the growth of Islamic pottery.
In Europe, the elites dined off metal, usually silver for the rich and pewter for the middling classes, from the ancient Greeks and Romans until the 18th century.
A trencher was commonly used in medieval cuisine. A trencher was originally a flat round of bread used as a plate, upon which the food could be placed to eat. At the end of the meal, the trencher could be eaten with sauce, but could also be given as alms to the poor. Similar use of bread is still found with the bread bowl.
The trencher was not fully replaced in France until the 1650s, although in Italy maiolica was used from the 15th century. Orders survive for large services. At an Este family wedding feast in Ferrara in 1565, 12,000 plates painted with the Este arms were used, though the "top table" probably ate off precious metal.
Possession of tableware has to a large extent been determined by individual wealth; the greater the means, the higher was the quality of tableware that was owned and the more numerous its pieces. The materials used were often controlled by sumptuary laws. In the late Middle Ages and for much of the Early Modern period much of a great person's disposable assets were often in "plate", vessels and tableware in precious metal, and what was not in use for a given meal was often displayed on a dressoir de parement or buffet against the wall in the dining hall. At the wedding of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, and Isabella of Portugal in 1429, there was a dresser 20 feet long on either side of the room, each with five rows of plate; A comparable display on three dressoirs could be seen at the State Banquet in Buckingham Palace for the US President, Donald Trump in 2019. Inventories of King Charles V of France record that he had 2,500 pieces of plate.
Plate was often melted down to finance wars or building, or until the 19th century just for remaking in a more fashionable style, and hardly any of the enormous quantities recorded in the later Middle Ages survives. The French Royal Gold Cup now in the British Museum, in solid gold and decorated with enamel and pearls, is one of few secular exceptions. Weighing more than two kilos, it was perhaps passed around for ceremonial toasts. Another is the much plainer English silver Lacock Cup, which has survived as it was bequeathed to a church early on, for use as a chalice.
The same is true for French silver from the 150 years before the French Revolution, when French styles, either originals or local copies, were used by all the courts of Europe. London silversmiths came a long way behind, but were the other main exporters. French silver now survives almost entirely in the form of exported pieces, like the Germain Service for the King of Portugal.
In London in the 13th century, the more affluent citizens owned fine furniture and silver, "while those of straiter means possessed only the simplest pottery and kitchen utensils." By the later 16th century, "even the poorer citizens dined off pewter rather than wood" and had plate, jars and pots made from "green glazed earthenware". The nobility often used their arms on heraldic china.
The final replacement of silver tableware with porcelain as the norm in French aristocratic dining had taken place by the 1770s. After this the enormous development of European porcelain and cheaper fine earthenwares like faience and creamware, as well as the resumption of large imports of Chinese export porcelain, often armorial porcelain decorated to order, led to matching "china" services becoming affordable by an ever-wider public. By 1800 cheap versions of these were often brightly decorated with transfer printing in blue, and were beginning to be affordable by the better-off working-class household. Until the mid-19th century the American market was largely served by imports from Britain, with some from China and the European continent.
The introduction to Europe of hot drinks, mostly but not only tea and coffee, as a regular feature of eating and entertaining, led to a new class of tableware. In its most common material, various types of ceramics, this is often called teaware. It developed in the late 17th century, and for some time the serving pots, milk jugs and sugar bowls were often in silver, while the cups and saucers were ceramic, often in Chinese export porcelain or its Japanese equivalent. By the mid 18th century matching sets of European "china" were usual for all the vessels, although these often did not include plates for cake etc. until the next century. This move to local china was rather delayed by the tendency of some early types of European soft-paste porcelain to break if too hot liquid was poured into it.