In a monastery refectory, the table was the longest thing in the room, built to seat a whole community down both sides for meals taken in silence. Found in Béziers, this early 20th-century French monastery table is a thick single-plank top on a heavy trestle base, the two uprights joined by a long stretcher pegged through with wooden keys. Refectory tables were made to come apart, the stretcher held by those keys rather than glue or nails, so a table this size could be knocked down and carried through a doorway when it had to move. Sylvie sets it down the middle of a kitchen with benches along one side and a jug of flowers at one end, laid for a lunch that runs long.
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