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A
dining room is a room for eating. It is usually adjacent to the kitchen
for convenience in serving.
History of Dining Room
Furniture
In the middle ages, Britons in castles or large manor houses would eat in
the Great Hall. This was a large multi-function room capable of seating
the bulk of the population of the house. The family would sit at the head
table on a raised dais, with the rest of the population arrayed in order
of diminishing rank away from them. Tables in the great hall would tend to
be long trestle tables with benches. The Great Hall would have been
extremely noisy, and likely would have been quite smokey and malodorous,
making it an unpleasant place to hold a discussion.
In response to the
discomforts of dining in the Great Hall, the nobility began to construct
parlours or drawing rooms off the Great Hall. These were far smaller rooms
to which the nobility could withdraw to relax and talk in comparative
quiet. Over time, the nobility took more of their meals in the parlour,
and the parlour became, functionally, a dining room (or was split into two
separate rooms). It also migrated farther from the Great Hall, often
accessed via grand ceremonial staircases from the dais in the Great Hall.
Eventually dining in the Great Hall became something that was done only on
special occasions.
Toward the beginning of the 18th Century, a pattern emerged where the
ladies of the house would withdraw after dinner from the dining room to
the drawing room, while the gentlemen would remain in the dining room
having drinks. The dining room tended to take on a more masculine tenor as
a result.
Modern Dining Room
Furniture
A typical North American dining room will contain a table with chairs
arranged along the sides and ends of the table, as well as other pieces of
furniture, (often used for storing formal china), as space permits.
In modern American homes, the dining room is increasingly used only for
formal dining with guests or on special occasions. Informal daily meals
are often taken in the kitchen or family room. This was traditionally the
case in England, where the dining room would for many families be used
only on Sundays, other meals being eaten in the kitchen. Often tables in
modern dining rooms will have a removable leaf to allow for the larger
number of people present on those special occasions without taking up
extra space when not in use.
Check out
our
Furniture Tips Pages for additional decorating
ideas or call us at 1-800-893-8545, we’ll put our years of experience
to work for you and help you find the perfect dining room set.
We feature dining room furniture by
Elite Furniture,
Pastel Furniture,
Trica Barstools
Magnussen Furniture and more
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