The option of adding leaf skirts on Amish dining room tables often causes confusion for Amish dining table shoppers. This post will hopefully clear this up.
An Amish dining table skirt is the strip of wood you see just below, and set slightly in, from the outer edge of the table top. On different table top shapes, this piece of wood follows the contour of the table top edge (edge profile).
Table skirts serve two main purposes:
1) To help maintain the strength and integrity of the table, and
2) To conceal the table gear slides and other mechanical gadgetry associated with the functionality and strength reinforcements on the underside of the table.
A leaf skirt is simply a matching version of the skirt on the table, so when you install leaves into your table, you will have a nice continual strip of wood matching and connection the table skirt all the way around, rather than having a gap where your leaves rest. As you can see from the picture, not having skirts on your table leaves will create a gap, but with them, it looks seamless.
If you don’t mind the gap, not having skirts on your leaves is not a big deal. The strength of not having them is made up for by extra reinforcements on the framework of any tables that are designed to extend and take leaves. However, if you’re interested in a table that can self store leaves, some tables will not take leaves with skirts on them. So, therefore, having skirts on your table leaves comes down to both aesthetics and store-ability.