Who Made That Picnic? - NYTimes.com Victor Prado for The New York Times "It's part of our DNA," says Walter Levy, author of "The Picnic: A History," who points out that "picniclike" events appear in the writings of Ovid, Plutarch and Seneca. The word "picnic," however, is of more recent vintage. An early mention can be traced to a 1649 satirical French poem, which features the Frères Pique-nicques, known for visiting friends "armed with bottles and dishes." In 1802, the term made a hop to Britain after a group of Francophiles in London formed a Pic-Nic Society to gorge, guzzle and perform amateur theatricals. Participants drew lots to determine who would supply which dish - from calf's-foot jelly to blancmange. "Depending on your luck," Levy says, "you might have to bring something expensive, like pie made from truffles." In the 1800s, British authors began to chronicle the adventures of picnickers who staged their meals in pastoral locations, almost like theater sets. In "Emma," Jane Austen's character Mrs. Elton plans a "sort of Gipsy party. We are to walk about your gardens and gather the strawberries ourselves and sit under trees. . . . Every thing as natural and simple as possible. Cars, Levy says, may have been the best thing ever to happen to picnics. In the early 20th century, the automobile was built more for amusement than long-distance travel - the early Oldsmobile, for instance, could be set up as a dining room on wheels with a strap-on "motor hamper" behind the passengers. In 1911, Mrs. A. Sherman Hitchcock instructed hostesses on how to put on a motor party with gadgets and foods designed specially for car picnics - doilies, motor-themed napkins, thermos bottles and "an envelope-shaped leather case containing aseptic cups that are destroyed after use." Picnics, she advised, were not just divertissements; our health depended on them. There never was, and never will be, such a remedy for the tired, overworked human body. Perhaps the picnic has endured because it can be adapted to so many tastes. "A picnic can be anything," Laurie Colwin wrote. It can resemble the Mad Hatter's tea party if you want it to. It's heart and soul is breeziness, invention and enough to eat for people made ravenous by fresh air. Rachel Gant - along with Andrew Deming - designed the Yield Picnic Bag, a tote that can be turned into a picnic blanket. How exactly does the bag turn into a blanket? There's a zipper running through the handle and the seam. When you unzip it, all the fabric lies perfectly flat. How did you come by this idea? We were just observing how people would go to the park on a lunch break. They'd have a bag, and they would have stopped by a market for food, but they didn't have the blanket, so they would use their coat or a paper bag to sit on. That's why it made sense to me that the blanket should be incorporated in a bag. Now that you've started a design company, do you still have time to go on picnics? We make a point of going on weekend trips. The last time we used the bag was up in Marin County; we found a little spot in the redwoods. We try to document the different places we've been with the bag. We're not filming. We just like to take a photo or two.