EAT design

• Photographer
  Daisuke Akita

Eating is essential to life. Without nourishment an organism is no longer able to maintain its metabolism and perishes. With humans, there is another dimension to eating along with the purely physiological one: Food intake is an important part of our individual and social self-image because the way we eat is not biologically programmed but culturally acquired. When we eat, we consciously surround ourselves with certain instruments, materials, and colors that stimulate our appetite and set the mood for enjoyment. Dishes, decorative objects, lighting conditions, and ambient sound strongly influence whether or not our food tastes good. But not only do furniture and table implements visually contribute to our sense of well-being, they also control our behavior. Tables and chairs determine our posture during the meal. Cutlery, plates, and glasses dictate how we maneuver food and drink to our mouths. While chairs and tabletops establish our position within the group, the place setting defines the elbow room allotted to us. In every society there is a strict system of conventions and rules that curb man’s natural eating instinct and specify how consumption is to proceed. To open a letter with a butter knife at the breakfast table goes against the unwritten rules of etiquette, which we often adhere to more strictly than to many other “real” laws. We assign objects specific functions and—whether out of habit or conformity—use or don’t use them exactly as convention dictates. A burgundy glass is seldom employed as a vase and certainly not as a toothbrush holder, and to comb one’s hair with a fork is simply barbaric. No one would think of sitting under the table, standing on a chair, or eating with a pair of tongs instead of a fork. Table utensils and their predetermined manner of use set eating apart from other everyday activities and underscore the higher significance of these implements: They ritualize eating. Why, over the past centuries, have certain eating tools prevailed while others have come and gone? How did the dining room evolve, and which cultural influences have led us to appoint it with tables, chairs, and china cabinets instead of other furnishings?