Russian Service: Napkins

Napkins have been used since at least the classical Roman world, when guests brought cloths to dinner to wrap up leftovers—the original “doggie bag.” Seventeenth-century European elites were dazzled at table by damask napkins intricately folded into flora or fauna. Contemporaneous Plymouth colonists, who ate without dining forks, wiped their soiled fingers on more plebeian linen. Napkins were one of the first “luxuries” listed in the simplest colonial decedent’s estate. Yet Americans by no means universally used napkins, and it was not simply a question of cost. As use of the dining fork spread, some assumed that the napkin was superfluous.