FORMAL PLACE SETTINGS GET A MODERN MAKEOVER
With some creativity, that old fussy china that’s been sitting in your cabinets can fit your casual lifestyle
The stacks of old family china sitting forlornly in sideboards, cabinets and boxes in many homes reflect the state of entertaining today. Many millennials aren’t wild about their grandmothers’ flowered formal plates, preferring their own plain white wedding dishes. Generation Xers and boomers, who often gravitate to dining at a kitchen island, rarely bother to pull out the “good stuff ” and are already trying to unload it.
The curators at Washington, D.C.’s Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens, the grand home of the late American socialite Marjorie Merriweather Post, thought about this lifestyle shift when they conceived their latest special exhibit. The Artistic Table: Contemporary Tastemakers Present Inspired Table Settings highlights Post’s collections of Russian imperial and 18th-century French porcelain and other luxurious tableware from her years of entertaining.
Curators asked a group of interior designers to combine Post’s formal porcelains, glassware and silver with contemporary pieces, to showcase new ideas for table settings.
Post entertained lavishly at Hillwood and her other estates, which include Camp Topridge, an Adirondack lodge. If there was one lesson to be learned from Post, it was not to be afraid of your nice things, according to Estella Chung, director of collections at Hillwood, the estate that Post bought in 1955 and owned until her death in 1973.
In this exhibit, Post’s historic tableware is displayed throughout the mansion, from a formal dinner featuring seven Russian services in the dining room to a breakfast tray with violet-sprigged dishes in her bedroom.
We asked the designers behind the exhibit to share a few entertaining secrets that might help anyone find ways to incorporate old china into a less formal lifestyle.
DON’T SET YOUR TABLE LIKE YOUR GRANDMOTHER DID
“Play with what you have. If you have antique dishes, find a boldcoloured solid dish that looks nice with it and some funky modern flatware,” New York designer Alex Papachristidis says. “Throw in an unusual hand-painted glass from a vintage store.”
One of his go-tos: durable Caspari wipe-clean placemats, available in designs including a green leaf and blue-and-white chinoiserie.
Use something unexpected, such as a leopard-print tablecloth.
NEVER SET THE TABLE THE SAME WAY TWICE
If you pull out the same dishes, glassware and tablecloth for every event, it’s time to change it up, says designer Barry Dixon of Warrenton, Va. If you’re not having fun setting your table, it can seem like just another boring chore.
Think of accessorizing a table as you do your wardrobe. Whether you are using basic white Ikea buffet plates or your mother-in-law’s vintage pink-and-brown Noritake, you can give them a new look by adding colour or pattern elsewhere on the table, Dixon says.
If you have old-fashioned floral china, add glass plates in jewel tones to update the table. Instead of white napkins, collect linen squares in different colours.
DON’T BE AFRAID TO
PUT YOUR CHINA IN THE DISHWASHER
Designer Timothy Corrigan who has offices in Los Angeles and Paris, uses his family and vintage porcelain collection daily and loads it all into the dishwasher. “I believe that every day is special,” he says. “Use your china. Don’t save it for an important day. Today is the day.”
Most gold on china can withstand 600 to 800 dishwasher washes before really fading.
He also puts his antique German sterling flatware in the dishwasher, a no-no in some circles, but he says that “using it all the time keeps it looking good; you don’t have to polish it.” But hand wash your fragile crystal.
REVIVE SUNDAY FAMILY DINNER
New York designer Charlotte Moss says families can benefit from an old ritual: the Sunday night dinner. “End your weekend and start your week with a little bit of civilization,” Moss says. Everyone helps, and kids can learn basic table-setting skills and manners. “It doesn’t have to be formal,” Moss says. “Arrange fruit as a centrepiece.”
Being familiar with table manners makes you comfortable and confident in many situations, Moss says. Your kids will appreciate the experience later, when they get invited to a special someone’s house to meet the family or when navigating business lunches.
“Whether your china is your grandmother’s formal porcelain or your mother’s castoffs, you should use it,” says Moss, whose 10th book, Charlotte Moss Entertains, is due out in April. “Don’t be afraid.”
DON’T WORRY ABOUT MAKING FANCY FOOD
Some people fear entertaining because they don’t enjoy or feel confident about cooking. That is no excuse for not using your good china, says Hutton Wilkinson, president of Los Angeles-based Tony Duquette. “It’s really more about the presentation. But of course, it helps if the food tastes good, too.”
Washington designer Josh Hildreth, who collaborated with Wilkinson, says a table set with your best things shows family and friends how much you appreciate them. “Putting out plates and setting a nice table creates a different experience for guests,” Hildreth says.
“Buy china not because you eat off it, but because it’s beautiful,” Wilkinson says. The two designers like to decorate their tables with curiosities such as crystal frogs or bejewelled starfish napkin rings.
Wilkinson says people are meeting in restaurants because they are too busy to cook. But there are alternatives. He recalls a glamorous hostess who sent out for buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken before a party and piled it onto her Georgian silver platters. Says Wilkinson, “It’s all about the presentation.”
UPGRADE FROM PLAIN WHITE TABLECLOTHS
Yes, you can have a formal dinner without using a white tablecloth, says P. Gaye Tapp, a North Carolina-based designer.
Years ago, white linen tablecloths and napkins were the only choice for fancy meals. Not anymore.
Tapp says couples whose dishes are gathering dust should consider bringing them out and coming up with a plan to match them to a modern textile pattern.
You can pick out colours in your china and look for fabric to set it off. She loves the look of vintage batik napkins paired with a bold tablecloth made out of a tree-oflife Indian pattern in indigo and cream. “If you use a formal white tablecloth, like many people do, it just makes everything seem more formal,” Tapp says.
The same china settings, whether floral or gold-edged, put against a more contemporary fabric look fresh and different.