Tablescapes add purpose, personal flair
Personal flourishes give often-overlooked design element purpose and functionality
Interior designers at Houston Design Center’s DASH Bash offer tips on how to liven up your living space by changing up the accessories displayed on your coffee table.
Aroom in your home needs an update, or maybe just a new touch for a party coming up. Consider your coffee table. You can call it a cocktail table or side table or anything else that you like, but it’s a piece that does some heavy lifting when it comes to both the form and function of a room.
Design books and blogs offer many tips for pulling off a great tablescape, but don’t worry about rigid rules. Someone with a great visual sense can pull it off easily.
Some of the city’s top interior designers created displays of inspiring coffee tablescapes at the Houston Design Center’s DASH Bash, a kickoff event for the semi-annual DASH Market, coming Thursday-May 14 at Silver Street Studios.
Here are tips designers offered along with their displays:
Functionality
First, ask yourself what the coffee table will be used for? Everyday use in a family room, an elegant touch for a living room, or a holiday-themed event? When you determine how the table will be used, you’ll know how much room can be filled vs. kept empty for drinks, plates or other uses, says Connie LeFevre of Design House and Fashion House.
Event
When decorating for a party or holiday, feel free to change everything out for that special event. If your party has a theme, decorate accordingly. For example, an outdoor summer party might call for a bowl of shells or a nautilus fossil. Flowers brighten up a shower or a collection of ornaments welcomes holiday guests.
Themes
You can always let your tablescape reflect your personality, but change it up for seasonal
events, special occasions, or even just to keep things interesting. Don’t be afraid to replace an item with something that will freshen it up; even the tiniest change is something you’ll notice.
Designer and artist Teri Pugh chose a Moroccan theme for her tablescape. She suspended a fabric drape over her table and surrounded it with colorful, embroidered pillows. Plenty of flowers speak to the blooms of spring, and small cups and ornate glasses along with hanging lanterns finish it off.
“I call it a cocktail table because it sounds more fun,” Pugh says. “I’m an artist, so I approach it like a blank canvas, and it comes to me as I go.”
Materials
Without question, you can never go wrong with flowers or greenery, according to designers at the DASH Bash event. You can simply use a potted plant or orchid. Highquality paper or faux flowers work well, too.
If you’re a gardener, head out to your backyard, as LeFevre did for her tablescape.
“Aspidistra. If you don’t have any in your yard, everybody should plant aspidistra,” she says of the leafy plant. “You can put them in tall vases or wrap them in a coil to line the inside of a round vase like florists do.”
Also consider a natural geode, a piece in crystal or Lucite, trays, antique bowls or other artifacts or small boxes made of silver, wood, brass or your favorite materials.
Details
Start with what you already have. If your décor inventory seems low, be on the lookout for interesting things when you travel or shop. Remember that the collected items don’t have to be expensive.
Designer Tami Owen set up her tablescape at Lucky Gem Imports rug store. Her coffee table, from Vieux Interiors, has a contemporary acrylic base with reclaimed wood on top, a juxtaposition of new and old, sleek and rough, airy and heavy. She loves small collections and brought some of her own things to display.
“I love old Lucite or crystal cigarette lighters, curtain finials and alabaster grapes,” she says of her assortment. “I just went to a Houston Garden Club event, and Hermes Mallea and Carey Maloney were the speakers. I loved listening to them and fell in love with their books.”
Textures
No matter what you gather for your tablescape, make sure you mix it up with different textures. A shiny pair of antlers next to a rough wooden bowl in Darla Bankston-May’s table or a combination of metal, glass and pink Roso Portogallo marble in Lucinda Loya’s project are two examples.
“What I love about this table is that it’s got metal and glass and marble,” Loya says of the custom Lazur Bespoke piece. For contrast on top, she filled a crystal bowl with pistachios, topped a slice of petrified wood with carved flowers and added in a book by a favorite artist, Vanessa Beecroft.
Books Stacks of books are an essential part of any sophisticated home. You can put them on shelves or set them on a side table, or use them as a base to hold other things. Make sure they make a statement about who you are: Chose lovely coffeetable books on nature, design, architecture, music of whatever strikes your interest.
Personalize
Your coffee table is one of the best places to personalize. Dip into things already in your home, and be on the lookout for objects you feel connected to.
In designer Corbin Young’s tablescape, perhaps the most interesting thing is the table itself. A midcentury-modern beauty with a glass top and black-lacquered frame, it once lived in the home of the Battelstein family, known for their downtown department store.
“I like a collected feel. These are all things I love,” Young says of his antlers, books, sculpture and his grandmother’s rosewood box from China.