What a Butler Knows About Setting a Dinner Table

One of the first rules of formal table setting is the 24-inch rule. This refers to the ideal amount of space from the centre of one plate to the centre of the next plate, allowing the guest plenty of elbow room. The two pictures that follow illustrate this. You may need to decrease the distance if your table is not large enough to allow 24 inches between.

The ideal distance from the back of a chair to the edge of the table is also 24 inches. This allows guests to sit comfortably. A good butler will use his or her butler stick to take these two measurements.

Today, few people use butler sticks to set their daily dinner tables, and to be truthful, even the contemporary butler doesn’t necessarily use the tool every day. But when there is a special occasion—such as an important family birthday or anniversary—the butler stick could be of use.

Butler's Tip: Accuracy + Symmetry = Beauty. When things are accurately and symmetrically placed, the eye perceives beauty. This guideline applies to many aspects of household design, from a balanced grand entrance to matching bedside tables.

This is how a professional butler would set the dining table with a butler stick.

Align the bottom of the butler stick with the edge of the table. The baseline for a place setting should be about one inchfrom the edge of the table—the width of the butler stick.

Align all the cutlery, the plate and the napkin to touch the top of the butler stick. This will create the perfect straight edge for your place setting. The plate should be centred at the 0, the centre of the butler stick.

Ideally, place the first knife 1 to 1.5 inches away from the plate. Continue using this same metric for the rest of the cutlery so that it is all equidistant. Note: you may choose to reduce the amount of space between items of cutlery if your table space is limited. What’s important is to keep everything consistent.

As you move around the table creating each place setting, use the same measurements.

To help achieve a beautiful place setting, strive for accuracy, and horizontal and vertical symmetry. [Above and below]

Sean Kelley, courtesy of Charles MacPherson Academy Inc.


Excerpted from The Butler Speaks by Charles MacPherson. Copyright © 2016 Charles MacPherson Associates Inc. Published by Appetite by Random House®, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.

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