Select dinner services and cutlery, etc. (loans from the Swiss National Museum and the Johann Jacobs Museum, both in Zurich, and from St.Gallen's Historical Museum) point to the historical cultural context of textile table culture: they show how closely table linen used to be linked to the table manners prevalent at any given time, to the owners' social status, and to their representational requirements.
Table linen enabled its owners to demonstrate luxury and affluence; it was an expression of good taste and of a cultivated household, in the period from the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries, it was an important symbolic part of the "trousseau", and the emboidering of monograms was regarded as an educationally valuable activity.
