What caused dining rooms to come into being wasn’t a sudden universal urge to dine in a space exclusively dedicated to the purpose, but rather, by and large, a simple desire on the part of the mistress of the house to save her lovely new upholstered furniture from greasy desecration. Upholstered furniture, as we have lately seen, was expensive, and the last thing a proud owner wanted was to have anyone wiping fingers on it.
