Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 265, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 November 1919 — First to Originate and Use Forks and Napkins on Table of Family Home [ARTICLE]

First to Originate and Use Forks and Napkins on Table of Family Home

“Fingers were made before forks,” trnd-thatis why we have napkins; Existence today would be <bad indeed without that” most essential of all table appointments, the napkin. ■ But can one conceive of its importance to our ancestors, who only a few hundred years ago ate without forks? ---For, as we know, it. was. not until i the seventeenth century that forks | imide - their bow to the most elite society of England, as a substitute for the time -honored fingers. In Ho- 1 I garth’s picture of a “Guildhall Ban- I quet” the whole illustrious company are seen eating with their hands. Small wonder at the necessity for the napkin, which was used not only during the meal itself, but afterward served the purpose of a towel. And then it was Italy, the home of reawakened fastidiousness, as well as the renaissance of art, that came forward with the inspiration for the new adjunct of the table, the fork, which somewhat modified uses of the napkin. But as long indispensable, the napkin had become second nature and.survives to our day.