I've been dragging my feet about showing this last setting for Becky's table. It was the last one that I did and looking at the pictures I took, and the table setting itself, I can tell I was tired. I had some other little decorations to add....I had set it up at home of course, and had included other flowers in small vases. I took them all down to Becky's house with the mountain of stuff I needed for the tables and for photography, but when this last table was set, I just didn't think of them. I stood there wondering why the table looked so empty, but my brain was a blank and finally I just went ahead without them. Now I wonder what to do. I thought of photoshopping them in, but I'm not that good with Photoshop. I could take everything back and do it again, but that's another imposition on Becky. I may just let them be what they are, but every time I look at these pictures I feel like I didn't quite pull it together and that's disappointing.
I do think this runner and the table as a whole do a good job of integrating the dark banded dishes into a spring setting. Using the bird nest was one of the ways I made it clear that this was spring. Unfortunately I didn't get around to setting the table until fall. I looked all summer for bird nest types of accessories but spring had passed by the time I started and what I had in mind was nowhere to be found. I did have the real bird nest in hand because a robin built it in a shed where it had been kept from deteriorating (in an old bike helmet). It didn't seem sanitary to put a "raw" nest on the dinner table, so I looked for glass enclosures that would be the right size and proportion. It took a lot of work to get it set up. It didn't quite come out like I envisioned it, but it did support the "weaving" theme that the runner implied.
To repeat the motivation for this table: I was trying to find a way to use the same dishes in all of the seasons. I always think of how the Japanese bring seasonal elements into their traditional dress, their garden designs and the tea ceremony. The grounding of their daily activities in the slip sliding of time and the eternal cycles of light connect them to their humanity and link the ordinary with the profound. This is something I think we need now in our time and our culture too.