The Trough

I’ve been looking at places to live. Most new builds I’ve visited are being designed without defined eating spaces. Lounge and dinning room homogenized into a space for the sofa and the one way conversation of the television. The Table is the western tool used to catalyse communal eating, providing personal space, distance and a plinth for the daily feast. Of course no table is complete without chairs.

The kitchen table

It was hardly surprising that the humble table was mentioned in the introduction to a day of talks about food. I had got up at 6am to travel to Oxford, the title of the talks was instantly captivating, ‘Thought for Food: the Ethics of Eating’.

Alison from Housing Justice gave a talk giving a blunt reminder of the simple things that can leave people without a home and without food. She had asked a few of the people she had worked with on the streets what they would most like to eat – the majority responding with not only the meal but also the context. A ‘sit-down roast dinner’. As I am currently looking for a house I can only say I concur! Sitting with people and having a cup of tea or a meal and a conversation is grounding and stimulating.

Only 2 days before I had dined at the Dinner Exchange. The table consisted of 3 pieces of plywood raised on books and covered in curtains and about 35 people. The distance you are from the person opposite can dictate who you end up speaking to. Either, if the table is small enough, you have a choice of 3 people, one on the right, one on the left and one in front. Other wise, when the table is wide the conversation slips into intimate 1 on 1 lengthy discussion.

The Historian, Alexander Murray, spoke about feasting and fasting and again the use of the table. Apparently farm houses would have served potatoes straight on to the wood for everyone to share, this reminded me of eating Ethiopian ‘Injera’ breads from the same plate as those you are eating with.

Thanks wikipedia

I think I eat more that way but it also makes me very mindful of how much the other have to eat – eating communally.

I hadn’t realized that this was a meeting for a discussion particularly around the church and food ethics. This discussion naturally began to talk of breaking bread and the Eucharist. I couldn’t help think what it really symbolises to eat bread now – with so little nutrients, full of air (if I were to sit on it I could reduce it to 20% of its original size) and genetically modified grain. The food we are eating can be shaped by human curiosity and scientific experimentation by man – what are we ingesting? Is that still Christ? I am not Catholic nor Christian so I can’t really begin to have this discussion.

We were all agreed that the true value of food is far wider than filling your stomach– it has a way of reminding you what ‘material’ means. Nourishment, a meal, conversation, sharing and satisfaction. It’s a material that brings us to the present, remaining edible for a short time, it literally becomes part of us. Sister Margaret Atkins summed it up quite beautifully at the end. ‘It binds us to our friends through hospitality’.  If tables are going to be what helps catalyse more of this I should like to start making tables for an eternity.

This entry was posted by Gallus bankiva on Monday, February 15th, 2010 at 10:29 am. It is filed under Design, Eating, Uncategorized, feast and has these tags: chairs, food, hospitality, table, theology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.