I pop in on the West Yorkshire board occasionally to see if anything relevant to my ancestors from the Halifax area has been posted. Hadn't expected to spend over an hour reading through five pages of a thread about a mystery photo that has gone unidentified for over four years.
My thoughts, after enlarging the photo: The clock in the background reads either 4:40 or 5:10 (p.m., obviously). When the picture is enlarged three or four times, the wide tail of the hour hand becomes clear, pointing to 10.
Someone knew how to set a table. The flowers in the glass vase on the table are real. There is a water line in the neck of the vase, with a dark shadow visible on the right side. Because the vase was tall, it was filled up to the neck to keep it from being tipped over by someone passing a dish or reaching for the last piece of pastry.
The serviettes (or whatever you call them in Yorkshire; we call them napkins where I live) are folded to look like bishops' miters. When I worked as a dining room waiter while I was on a hiatus from university, we used to fold our serviettes/napkins that way. It allegedly brought a touch of class to the table.
The woman holding the tea pot and the two women to her left seem to be staff members of establishment where the event is taking place. Those two women to the right of Ms. Tea Server are interesting because they are dressed both to serve and to take part in the event. Both appear to be wearing aprons and the one next to the woman pouring tea is wearing a hat, like a number of the guests. I think those three serving tea are also guests at the do. They are smiling at the camera, unlike the two younger serving ladies in the background. All of those standing, if they are guests, would be seated behind the gentleman in the right foreground.
The table has nine or ten settings. With a modest 18 inches of space per setting, the table would be twelve to fifteen feet long.
All of that said, I have no idea when (year or decade) or where the picture was taken. The spectacles make me think 1940s.
John
