Plate Display & Performance
Because of their expensive values and limited availability, a matching culinary set likely belonged to a genteel home in the 19th century. Visitors would have found remarkable differences between ordinary homes and genteel houses in both the menu items and the dinnerware (Bushman 1993, p. 74). Gentility regulated dining as much as it did the body, including the wish to keep food clean; the spirit of refinement placed people on chairs at tables, giving each individual utensils, and put food on platters and serving bowls (Bushman 1993, p. 76). Consequently, middle- to upper-class families would have been eating at dinner tables with serving platters in the late 18th century and early 19th century. However, only a tiny portion of the population of Massachusetts would have dined on porcelains (Bushman 1993, p. 78). Because porcelain dinnerware was primarily found amongst only the wealthiest of Bostonians, matching transfer-printed pearlware ceramic dinner sets would have been exclusive to a family of means. Such a set would uphold the wealthy family's refined interests and facilitated genteel behavior at dinner; along with these dining instruments, genteel bodies were expected to adhere to proper dining etiquette while sitting at the table and participating in the act of eating (Bushman 1993, p. 76). Due to this phenomenon, this imported plate would have been a tool to support the mechanism of genteel dining expectations. By guiding eating principles and human bodies, it upheld its owner's refinement and social status.