1885 New Guide Hotel Bar Restaurant

THE NEW GUIDE FOR HOTELS, ETC.

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CHAPTER XV. Table Decorations, Room Adornments. THE subject of room and table decoration is not the least important item to the would-be successful caterer for dinners, public banquets and entertainments. Plenty of glass and silver we know are standing rules, plenty of light, a sine-que-non, but there are those caterers who never get past the bunches of dried and outrageously coloured grasses, ever- lasting flowers, a few geraniums, and a heterogenous olla podrida of all sorts of flowers huddled together, irrespective of all the laws of colour, grouping, and taste. There are two things to be remembered, contrasts and harmonies, and these are guided by certain laws or rules. There are pleasant contrasts and outrageous contrasts, like the discords in music ; one prefers the gentle contrast or discord of sounds occasionally introduced by Gounod in his pathetic passages to the flaring extravagantly wild eccentri- cities of Wagnerian productions. For a banquet or dinner the great thing to study is to pro- duce on the guests a sense of rest rather than irritation, and there must be a fitness in things. One does not want to go to a public dinner and feel as if the surroundings were utterly funereal. The guests go with happy hearts to enjoy them- selves, and the surroundings should be so arranged that the feelings or motives which actuated them should be sustained. In many places the style and character of the table decora- tions are left to the Chef to superintend, so that he may have his dishes in accordance with the decorations and the tout en semble unique. This is especially the case where the Chef acts as caterer and steward of the club and household. For