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Mise en Place

Shaker dining tables, measured in fours

Shaker dining table, pine and birch, 1825–50
Dining Table, 1825–50. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain.

Two Shaker trestle dining tables at the Met. Known here from the museum's records, not from a dining room.

The longer one, American, 1825–50, pine and birch, is 310.5 cm long. Its record gives the rule behind it: Shakers designed communal dining tables "to accommodate squares of four persons each." A ten-foot table serves three squares, twelve people.

So the length isn't a guess about how many might come. It's a count. The unit is four diners, and a table is so many units long. The room can be planned before anyone sits in it.

The other table, from the Enfield, Connecticut community, 1800–1825, maple and ash, is 127 cm long and was made for four: one square. The Met suggests it quite possibly seated the elders, who led the community and ate apart from the rest. The same unit that lays out the hall also marks who sits where.

Even the Enfield table's one visible flourish has a job. The record says its nail-applied end cleats keep the two-board top from warping and pulling apart.

By Raz Rotenberg, made with AI

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