George I Dining at Hampton Court

This is a new display in the Georgian Rooms at Hampton Court Palace, around Fountain Court.

It depicts the dining table of Geroge I in 1717-18 when the new Hanoverian King was entertaining in splendour at Hampton Court, as a counter-balance to the rival Court set up by his son Prince George.

The table has an amazing display of folded napkins which we are told were an important part of dining in Germany at the time. We can see here centre stage the white horse of Hannover, a rabbit and in the foreground some napkin asparagus!

Apparently the earliest instruction manual for the artistic folding of napkins was published in 1639, as part of Le tre trattati, a series of treatises on the culinary arts written by Matthia Gieger, a German who worked as a meat carver in Padua and who learned the art of napkin folding so well that he taught the subject at the University of Padua!

During the golden age of European napkin folding, Nuremberg was the home of an entire school devoted to the art, butlers had shelves of 'how-to' manuals to stay up-to-date with the rapid pace of fold innovation, and Samuel Pepys paid an expert 40 shillings to teach his wife the craft!

Napkin-folding culture evolved closely linked with the elaborately pleated clothing of the Renaissance and the culinary extravagances to which the garments were worn. It unsurprisingly came to its height in the Baroque and Roccoco periods of the 17th an 18th centuries.

The napkins, were perfumed with rose water, and were not only used to protect clothing and to wipe one’s mouth: the eye-catching folded fabric was often designed to accommodate other elements of the table, like place cards, menus, and toothpicks.

At grand banquets such as here, the importance was on ingenuity and display; the meal was not intended to feed so much as delight the senses and impress the guest with the host’s wealth and status.