Raven and Sparrow

Spring Stars

Another spring table, and I'm rummaging through my stuff for something different. I don't have very many tablecloths that say spring to me, and now that I'm entertaining more often I feel like I need more. I did find a cloth I made years ago by doing fold and clamp on a rough hand-woven runner from India. I dyed the cloth with osage orange and then clamped star-shaped wooden cut-outs from the craft store on the folded cloth and dipped it in indigo. I got a soft springy sort of green with yellow stars where the clamped wood resisted the indigo. Some of the stars were less well-defined than others, so I used embroidery to outline and enhance them. The blues of the embroidery thread made the runner look best with my blue undercloth. Once that combination came together the table took off and became something different than I expected. The green that first attracted me to the runner became less important than the yellow and blue, Yellow plates, and a blue pitcher with daffodils moved in and made a stronger, funkier statement than I first envisioned. My Mexican glassware and the huge, ziggy stainless worked the best with the rough, casual textiles and the square plates. I don't know how springy this table is....maybe it's energy has something to do with the green fuse that drives the flower....but it was fun to do.

Easter Zen

It seemed like a laid-back weekend was in store...Saturday at home, and Easter dinner with my family at my parents' house. Then, Saturday morning we got a call from some friends we hadn't seen in a long time who were in the area for the day. Of course we asked them to dinner and when they accepted the weekend went from laid back to highly active. With time so short I was tempted to re-use the table setting from a couple of weeks ago, but it was the day before Easter, the weather was finally sunny and the setting just didn't seem appropriate any more.

So...an Easter table, chop chop. None of my pieces were right in color or theme, but I did have a peach colored undercloth. I thought I'd use it with green, yellow and pink dishes and pink glassware, as I had the last time I gave a dinner at Easter. I have some glittery eggs somewhere that might add some interest.I ironed the peach cloth and added a vintage white linen embroidered runner. Lacking flowers I got a small house plant in a white basket and put it in the middle. The basket immediately made the whole thing more low key, less sparkly. Now the glittery eggs didn't seem right. I already had a basket of china eggs as a seasonal decoration in the hall, so I robbed it for duller, more realistic eggs and that seemed good. I had little soft green leaf dishes as a gift from my friend Marie, and they also seemed good. I used the same candle holders, and the same green ribbon from my last table. The center now was almost entirely green and white, very quiet and more naturalistic than I first envisioned...sort of Zen-like, I thought; The pink glasses and dishes were too much so I went back to clear. I really liked the unflashy solidity of it, but worried that it lacked spirit. So, using the exception that proves the rule, I got out the chartreuse crystal dealy-bobber decorations from Christmas and stuck them in the plant. They echoed the leaf shapes of the real plant and both blended in and added zest to the centerpiece.

Its funny how my ideas get short-circuited by the settings as they unfold. It so often seems that my work starts out with a plan and then becomes what it damn well pleases. Its usually better when that happens, but it is like wandering in the wilderness. This time it came out okay...at least I found the table satisfying. The meal also came out well. I spent more time on the table than on planning the menu, but the food, though simple, tasted pretty good. We spent a very pleasant evening reconnecting with our friends on the day before Easter. 

Note: I kept wondering as I made this table why I kept thinking of Zen as I fiddled with eggs and pastel colors. Later I found out that some Buddhist traditions consider April 8 to be the birthday of Buddha, so this really was a Zen Easter. Perhaps I was receiving unconscious vibes from the universe.

Winter into Spring

I read once that in the Imperial days of Japan, the layered kimonos worn by the court were judged by how well they mirrored the season and cycles of the natural world, Every five days or so (I'm not sure of the exact time period) some element of color or pattern in their exquisite dress was supposed to change in response to what was happening outside. I don't work in such subtle gradations, but I do feel more satisfied if my table settings are appropriate to the season.

This table started out with a gray/lavender cloth I dyed myself with logwood gray. When I spread it out on the table, I immediately thought of a wool scarf I bought at Christmastime from Asian Eye and had never worn. When I put them together it was like they were made for each other. However,even though the motif on the scarf was sun and flowers, the colors were sort of somber for springtime, or at least for the springtime I wished we were having. This is the second exceptionally cold and cloudy spring we have had in a row. Last week it was freezing every night and we even had some snow, although the trees and shrubs are budding out anyway and the woods are showing the gauzy green of new growth. By introducing green to my wintry color scheme, I thought I could make my table very appropriate to our current weather. 

I used my green plates, and the various blue and green bottles, glassware and floats I have collected for the center. It came together when I wound a translucent green ribbon saved from a recent birthday gift between the glassy things, and put aging (they turn green when they get older) hellebore blossoms about. From my now extensive silverware selection, I chose my mother-in-law's very simple everyday stainless and also used her Fostoria water glasses for texture. When I was finished I felt like our inside reflected the outside pretty well.Our neighbors joined us for a dinner of Cornish game hens and helped us usher winter into spring. 

 

Silver cascade

For most of my adult life we had one set of silverware. When Mike and I married, his mother gave us a twelve setting set of Reed and Barton stainless in a simple traditional pattern. I loved it... it was really nice quality and we have used it ever since. When we were young we didn't even think of asking for silver...plate or sterling. It was so expensive and so impractical for impoverished newlyweds. I was really grateful to have a complete set of nice stainless and I think of my dear mother-in-law so often when I use it.

After she died (a huge loss for our family) Mike's dad gave me the sterling she had received from her grandmother. Her last name was Woodhouse, so when Mary (Mike's mom) married Jack Webb, Grandmother gave her the sterling because it was monogrammed with a W. The knives are pearl handled, and the spoons and forks don''t match each other. There aren't any salad forks or soup spoons or any serving pieces....just twelve knives, twelve spoons and twelve forks with very long tines. It is so old and so pretty I have used it to set my special tables with pleasure for over twenty years now.

Suddenly, lately, silverware has appeared in droves...and boxes. Last year some friends gave us a very contemporary set of stainless which added a new dimension to my tablesetting vocabulary. It is way bigger than the other patterns, but it is very well balanced and comfortable in the hand.  It's great for more casual settings and occasions.

Last week, Mike's brother brought two more boxes of silverware.... the stainless that was used every day in his mother's house (also contemporary...kind of Danish) and the silverplate that was her "good" silverware before she inherited her grandmother's sterling. Both are kept in boxes and include many serving pieces. Both have salad forks,and soup spoons. The silverplate is also engraved with W's. All of it has been used and used and used. The plate is honeycombed with the scratches that accumulated over many years of holiday meals. The stainless is the same set we always used when we visited Mike's parents. I have set many tables with it.

So now I am swimming in silverware. Most of it carries a load of family history and memories.and won't be shed lightly. In this time of my life though, I don't need to keep things I don't use. We shall see.

It's funny how stuff accumulates, often laden with obligation and history. Also, for me, possibilities.Again, we shall see.

New stuff

    After I posted my Christmas tablesetting I got an email from my Aunt Myrt complimenting me (thanks Aunt Myrt!) and mentioning how great it would be to have access to all the plates and stuff in a big store. I've been daydreaming in china departments for a long time and would indeed love to play with unlimited resources, but her comment reminded me that mostly people have to work with what they have. The dishes, tablecloths and other accessories needed to continually and totally reinvent the table are beyond the reach of most people, both financially and in time and effort expended. I've always reached for every new book on tablesettings, but usually feel disappointed because they are always (well, usually) gorgeous, but have nothing to do with anything I own or could put together without buying lots of expensive things. Most of the time when I am setting the table I must respond to the season and the occasion by drawing from what I have. At this stage of my life I have a lot more than I used to ...a personal vocabulary of items selected from stores both fancy and thrifty, inherited, given to me as gifts, and made by me. My collection makes tablesetting more fun and satisfying, but the process is the same as when I only had the cheap set of dishes I bought at Sears. It is always limited by something.

    Paradoxically, limits can be freeing, and in these days endless new stuff is excessive, not to mention impersonal. However, its amazing how some little new thing can reinvigorate my thinking and bring out new possibilities in the stuff I have. I now rarely add to my dish collection, but I am always thinking of new linens I would like to make. In the meantime, occasionally buying new decorative accessories can be as inspiring as a whole new set of plates. Just a little bit of new can keep the old fresh and flexible.

After the Wedding

Just before Christmas our dear friends Mark and Flora asked if they could be married at our house. We are delighted with the happiness they have found together and could only say yes to their request, Unfortunately we had fallen into post-move inertia and have been squatting amongst construction debris and unplaced belongings for several months. The house is liveable, but not finished and an event like a wedding makes you see everything afresh that needs to be done. The original plan was to hold the ceremony outdoors if at all possible, understanding that January is pretty iffy weatherwise. Mark and Flora chose a cliff setting overlooking the water not too far from the house, only partially clogged with unused wood scraps and overgrown with scotch broom. So there was outdoor work and indoor work to be done, and all after the hustle and fuss of Christmas. As soon as the decorations were stowed away we got to work on a variety of small improvements and clean-up projects. The tile was laid in the entry, the powder room got a door knob and tile backsplash, the windows and floors were washed, wood piles were moved, scotch broom was cut. The weekend before the wedding there was a forecast of snow, but at our house it was beautiful. The sun shone through dramatic cloud formations and sparkled on the water as we worked outdoors all day. It would have been a great day to be married outside. However, the snow did come...heavily. By the wedding day a week later it was gone, but the wind was howling and it was clear that the ceremony would be indoors. And so it was. There were twelve people in attendance, including the officiant. The bride was lovely, the groom was nervous. It was a beautiful, meaningful, heartfelt, intimate experience....just what a wedding ought to be. Not everything got done as I had hoped it would, but I think we made a setting worthy of the occasion and for that I feel pleased,

Now I'm trying to get back to my own projects, which seem to have been delayed forever. I always feel this way after Christmas, and the wedding preparations magnified the disconnect. I expect a few days will pass before I can bring any real energy to something new, but I'm looking forward to moving ahead. My new year is just beginning. 

Runner debut

It seems like my productivity runs in streaks. Last year at this time I was working like mad to make some table linens to show at the holiday art walk our town sponsors each December. I had three runners and one big square under construction through the fall, working at night and weekends to get them finished. Just before the deadline, the last indigo dip on the runners ruined two of them, which was very disappointing. Once the show was over, I walked away from my studio and haven't been back since. (In my defense, the spring and summer were thoroughly taken with moving into the new house.)

This runner is one I made a while ago. The round motif came from a rubbing of an engraved metal disc, which I enlarged and made into a silk screen. I screened the design in Pre-sist and myrobalan and then overpainted the whole thing with logwood grey, staining the centers with some pretty concentrated cochineal.Once everything got washed out, I went back and re-screened the round motifs with a thiox discharge. Getting the circles neatly spaced was unexpectedly difficult, but this version came out pretty symetrically. My kind friend Jesse at Asian Eye (www.asianeye.com) helped me get a good picture of it.

Now that I have a dining room, some of these things I made a while ago are coming into use for the first time. Last week I used the grey runner, thinking its color had some of the elusive melancholy of autumn.

Since it is not too long (about 60 inches by 15 inches wide) I put it over my off white table cloth. I would have preferred a natural linen undercloth, but I don't have one. Asiatic lilies were the most compatible flowers available for the least amount of money. I envisioned cream colored roses, but couldn't find any this time. The nice thing about lilies are their sculptural shapes and cool pod-like buds. Using them is an instant antidote to my small/fussy tendencies with centerpieces, as illustrated by my previous table. Silver looks pretty on this cloth, so I got out my silver birds, and the candlesticks my great aunt gave us as a wedding present. Pink glassware and grey plates with natural linen napkins finished it off. I have been searching out this particular glassware at second-hand stores because I just love its warm overtones. Pinks that flirt with peach are my favorites.                                                                         

I was happy with the feeling the runner created on the table. Even though the cochineal traces on it encourage the use of pink, it doesn't feel especially feminine or fussy to me. I would like to try the design in different colors. I feel the need to dye coming over me again, so maybe it will happen.

Back to the table

     It's been a while.....a long while....since I could entertain easily. We've been living in our wonderful/horrible old summer house through way more winters than I ever thought we would. Someone asked me recently how long we had lived here full-time and I hemmed around (bad at remembering timelines) and came up with 2006. A little research revealed that we sold our Seattle-area house and moved in here October 1, 2004. Gulp. Seven years ago. For all this time, I haven't had a table that could seat more than four, or a living room that could be heated to anything above 55 degrees between Thanksgiving and Easter. The dishes I've collected have been stored, along with the vases, ribbons, napkins and candles that I draw from when I set a table. Now, at last, the storage unit is emptied and the new house is habitable. The pretty chairs are again arranged around a table that can seat eight. It's not exactly as though we haven't entertained in the intervening years, but it hasn't been like it used to be. We begin again.

    Okay. Eight people coming for dinner in the first week of October. An autumn table is an obvious choice, and I'm not too proud to be obvious. Centerpieces are the hardest, so I start to look around for possibilities. Leaves haven't turned here in Western Washington, but the rose hips are plump and vivid (also mean). Checking out the grocery stores for flowers, fruit or other possibilities is discouraging. This week the goods are both tired-looking and expensive. There are some really cool wooden apples in a nearby shop, but they cost $4.50 each. The new crop of real apples hasn't made it to the grocery store and I don't want to wait for the farmers market on the day of the dinner. The chrysanthemums outside Safeway are the cheapest seasonal flowers. The little pumpkins are cute,  but I don't have a good vision for how to use them with my stuff. As usual, even when I start early I can't see too far down the road. I buy the mums and leave the pumpkins and the wooden apples.

   At home, I review the tablecloth choices. I have a couple that might be okay, but the chestnut dyed pique will be the easiest. Easy is good. I get out all the dishes that I think might work, Usually I like the low contrast, low key plates, but this time Mike's mother's old apple pattern Franciscan plates have the most life. Do I have eight of those? Yes! and only one is chipped. (My mother also had the same dish pattern, but not too many survived...Franciscan chips easily.) So apple plates with brick red napkins. I regret not buying apples for the centerpiece. I also find six rusty metal oakleaf napkin rings that I bought for $1.50 at a garage sale and have never used. When I try to fit the napkins into one I realize why. Too small. After cramming a napkin into one, I cut my finger trying to get it out.  I will have to integrate band-aids into the table setting if  I use them that way.  However, I find that tying ribbon around the napkin and propping the oak leaves over them looks okay, and the oak leaves make a nice repeat of the dark wood of the table.

   Evaluating glassware is quick, because I don't have so many choices. Again I turn to pieces I inherited from my dear mother-in-law. She chose a common Fostoria pattern when she married and amassed quite a collection over the years. I probably wouldn't have chosen the pattern myself, but now I wouldn't trade it for anything. I always think of her when I use them, and they are so handy in every situation. Silverware also is easy, Mike's grandmother's sterling has pearl-handled knives that look pretty and add life to the table. I feel so lucky to have received such lovely table things from my husband's family. My family didn't have the same resources, and used what it had much harder.  

     The tablecloth and napkins have been pressed and the plates are set. I'm back to the centerpiece, which never comes easily, no matter how much I've thought about it. I bought the lavender mums because I figured purple would be a good complement to autumn colors, but now I have brown and red with off white, and no purple in sight. I think the centerpiece should be dark because of the oak leaves, and for contrast, but I don't have anything in wood or ceramic that works. Just looking for dark things, I get out three shallow carnival glass goblets that Mike bought for his mom years ago. I feel pretty doubtful until I put the rose hips into one and they just pop. Of course, I don't have enough hips for all three goblets, I don't really have enough for one. Also, that shallow coupe shape is just murder to arrange things in. Lacking a good alternative as time gets short, I keep fooling with it and realize that the stems of the rose hips make a good armature for holding the a few of the lavender mums. The whole thing is too small for the table, but the colors, oddly, look just fine with the dishes. I put a lace doily under the goblet to beef up its presence, and add a couple of dark purple votive holders to either side. It's done, because it has to be, and now the camera battery gives up the ghost.

   I go on to greet my guests, finish the dinner, drink champagne, light the candles, and gather everyone around my table, as I love to do. In the low light of evening, the table looks warm and welcoming, the centerpiece looks rich instead of paltry, and my friends are in a fine flow of jokes and conversation. The food is good, the company is great; it's a wonderful occasion and I am so happy.

Objects of desire

 

I don't shop much these days, but recently I went over to Macy's for some underwear plain and dull. On my way from lingerie back to my car I happened to pass through the china and glassware department. Okay, I went out of my way to pass through the china and glassware department, and was rewarded by finding these Dansk wineglasses. I just love them. I don't need them, I have no place to put them, and I probably won't be able to use them for ages, but I love them. The straight-sided shapes and the etched designs were irresistable, and to further erode any lingering scruples I should have had but didn't, they were on sale.

Brown table down

Using the brown leaf tablecloth turned out to be harder than I thought it would be. The blue napkins I found in my stash and the gray plates in my cupboard, so I was lulled into a false sense of complacency about the final outcome. I did search the limited shopping possibilities around me, hoping for accessories that would look great with the tablecloth ( I was especially looking for small glass fishing floats for a centerpiece...no luck ), but almost everything I brought home looked wrong in the end.

At Pier 1 I found some dishes that I thought would be great and I had the tablecloth with me when I saw them, but at home they were too yellow and too bright. Unless they look good with some other tablecloths I guess they'll have to go back. That said, I am pretty impressed with the cheap dishes available at Target and Pier 1. I'll have to re-think my view that dishes are too expensive to change easily. Of course, they are all poorly made in China, but the designs are nice.