“Mom! Which side does the fork go on?”

I have probably said that sentence 4 billion times. I have been setting the table since I could walk. We always had a “sit down” dinner at our house and my sister and I would always have to set the table. The same with my daughter, Grace. It is a running joke in my family that everyone knows I cannot remember which side the fork goes on. It’s just a mental block that I have. I also cannot remember the difference between cantaloupe and melon or fiction and nonfiction. No matter how many times somebody tells me the difference, I cannot remember it. I also cannot subtract, nor do I care to. Even though I can’t remember which side the fork goes on, I love setting the table. But do you know what I despise? I despise the word “tablescape.” It just makes me cringe with suburban terror. I despise it almost as much as I despise the words “water feature” and “white noise.” I do, however, love the word “despise.” :-)

To conclude our series on dishes, I’ve put together a little compilation of some of my favorite table settings and some more of my favorite dishes. How could I leave out Juliska, Royal Copenhagen, Blue Willow, Anna Weatherly, Oscar de la Renta etc.! Jadeite, earthenware, transferware, Fiesta, McCoy, stoneware, enamelware! OMG, it’s endless. You can also check out my Pinterest board for more HERE and HERE

 

 

Whew! That was a lot! Setting the table is definitely an art. Color, scale, placement, layering…dinnerware, flatware, stemware, flowers, napkins, tablecloths, candelabras etc. There is a lot to learn from the basic table setting to the extraordinary. Good news, there are a few good books out there for guidance and inspiration…here are a few of my favorites…

 Table Settings by Alberto Pinto

Purchase HERE

 Flair by Joe Nye

Purchase HERE

 Tablescapes by Kimberly Schlegel Whitman

Hate the title. Love the book.

Purchase HERE

I have just realized that I have opened up another can of worms… The Art of Entertaining. I realize there is a lot going on in the world right now in Syria, Israel, Palestine, Iraq and good old St. Louis and I understand that it could be a bit shallow to talk about entertaining. However, one of my doctors gave me some really good advice. He is a very gentle Indian neurologist named Dr. Siddique, specializing in ALS, so he is faced with the tragedy of his patients illness every day…. As all of us are aware of the sufferings of others by watching the news around the world unfold every evening. He told me the best way to survive is to take five minutes every day and focus on my illness. Cry, scream, meditate, pray, worry and throw in a panic attack for good measure. Then, he told me, to “put it away.” Put it away and spend the rest of the day with positive thoughts and positive actions. I think this is good advice for everyone. So, let’s say our prayers to whomever you answer to for all of the despair that the world is faced with and then let’s lift our spirits and be thankful that there is some joy and beauty in life. Like dinner parties. :-)

I think we should start with the basics tomorrow. Hint: “Good Manners: The noise you don’t make when eating your soup.”- Bennett Cerf

The O’Connell’s Are Stupid.

Let me explain… My family has been collecting Quimper dishes for three generations, maybe four. And for those four generations, every dinner plate, platter, soup tureen, salad plate, cake plate, oyster plate, mustard jar, salt cellar, tea set…every single solitary piece has crossed our path. This is definitely the Smith family collection. Smith is my mother’s maiden name as well as my aunt and my grandmother’s married name… The Quimper Collectors. So, imagine this, you collect a certain pattern with gusto for your whole life, so you must’ve had conversations about this pattern to hundreds of people including salespeople (“I would like to order a 5 Piece place setting for 12 of Quimper, please.”), antique dealers (“What is the price of this antique Quimper butter dish?”), your family (“Can I borrow the Quimper fish platter?”), housekeepers (“Please only hand wash the Quimper.”), and to your children (“You can have my Quimper after I die, so take care of it.”) You must’ve said the word “Quimper” thousands and thousands and thousands of times over the generations. But in my family, we found out last year, yes, just last year that we had been pronouncing the word “Quimper” incorrectly the entire time! The entire time! For at least 100 years! You would think someone would have checked the pronunciation. But, no. So yes, we are stupid. The correct pronunciation is similar to “cam pair.” It does not, as the O’Connell’s say it, rhyme with “wimper.”

 

Things like this happen to our family all the time. This is why my family has such a good sense of humor. However, I have to admit, the source of our laughter usually stems from my mother. I could start an entire blog titled, “Stuff my mother says.” It has been an endless source of entertainment for my sister and me. Do not be mistaken, we are not laughing with my mother, it is definitely at my mother. However, after we explain to my mother just exactly what she had said or done, she laughs hysterically and then eats a candy bar or chocolate croissant. Please remind me later to tell you about the time my mother got stuck in the train doors at Versailles. But for today, I thought I would tell you what my mother said yesterday according to my sister. My sister told me that she and my mother were having a conversation about canning vegetables. My sister said she did not like to can vegetables from her garden because the canning sterilization process is so difficult. My mother said very seriously and emphatically, “Yes, do you know that green beans have killed more people than any other vegetable?” Obviously, she was referring to botulism… But in her own special way. My family spent the remainder of the day teasing my mother about dangerous violent green beans.

 

 

We like to refer to my mother as our family idiot savant. However, this lady, my crazy mother, has the best taste and the best style and most talent of anyone I’ve ever met. She can’t spell, pronounce words in French (or English for that matter) or budget, but she can cook, sew, decorate, dress, hunt for antiques with a keen eye, decorate a Christmas tree to the hilt, paint (I mean, like, a house), bake award-winning peach cobbler, make a croquembouche, and keep a home better than anyone on this earth. She doesn’t just do any of the aforementioned talents lightly. When I say she can sew, I mean like nearly professionally. She hand sewed all of Gracie’s little dresses out of vintage tablecloths and she hand knitted all of Gracie’s sweaters and crocheted her stuffed animals. She sews and embroiders curtains, napkins, and bedspreads in a blink of the eye. When I say she can decorate, it would put the best interior designers to shame. She can cook a Beef Wellington with her eyes closed and then teach the neighborhood how to do it. When I say that she can keep a home, I mean that she can take care of three bratty children while painting the dining room Yves Klein blue, throw a dinner party for 30 cooking everything on her own, while building an outdoor lattice trellis with the gardener, while tending to her 300 David Austin rosebushes, while ironing every napkin we own, while putting on her annoying capri pants, while running 5 miles a day, while eating a Nestlé’s crunch bar.

 

 

 

So, when I say my mother has a collection of Quimper, I mean she has a c-o-l-l-e-c-t-i-o-n. My family loves Quimper. My grandmother used to blow out Easter eggs and then delicately and perfectly hand paint the Quimper pattern onto the eggs. She also painted the Quimper pattern onto flour containers, sugar containers and bread boxes. I included a photo. My mother baked sugar cookies and then made royal icing and painted the Quimper pattern (in icing!) on the cookies and made them into Christmas tree ornaments. The entire tree (no other ornaments that year) was covered with my mother’s Quimper cookies hung with navy blue ribbon.

 

The dishes originate from the town of Quimper in Brittany, France. By train, the scenic town is about four and half hours outside of Paris. The town is known for its faience pottery originating in the 1700s. The man attributed to the founding of Quimper faience is named Jean-Baptiste Bousquet. My mother’s pattern dates back to the 1860s. Faience is referred to as the puff pastry of pottery because it is very difficult to master. The Quimper pottery is known for its hand painted designs depicting the culture of Brittany, especially the peasant dress of the townspeople.

Collectors can get rather particular about their Quimper and its history and markings. If you’re into that kind of stuff, you might like this article HERE.

 

My mother’s pattern comes in either a yellow (Soleil) background or an ivory background with octagonal dinner plates. It also comes with a yellow and blue border in a round shape. It is great as everyday china for breakfast lunch or dinner. If you’re having a big fat fancy dinner…I would use something else. You can purchase these dishes as new HERE. If you want to buy antique Quimper, I would check eBay.

 

 

So that’s it for the dishes obsession blogs. Tomorrow I thought we could end the series by looking at my favorite table settings to bring this full circle. Thank you for all of your nice comments. Or, as my mother would say thank you in French, “Mercy.”

http://www.quimperfrenchpottery.com/

A toute!

J'adore.

 

 

What can I say about these dishes? To say that I love them more than I love my sister would be an understatement. Juuuust kidding! But it’s pretty close. But, I do love them more than my leopard hat collection. But that’s pretty close too. Nevermind, I love all of my stuff equally. Everything is special about these dishes. My mother and I first discovered these dishes on the seventh floor of Bergdorf’s in New York. I wanted to find the manufacturer so I could sell them at our shop, Circa, in Santa Barbara. (Sorry to copy you Bergdorf’s but remember, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.) So naturally, I picked up one of the plates, flipped it over, looked for a stamp or any markings…Nothing! I asked the salesperson who the manufacturer of the dishes was, but I think she was on to me, so she said they were only made for Bergdorf’s. Liar. Now I want them even more. Let the quest begin. This was no easy feat, I learned, because this was seven years ago when there was not a lot of press or exposure regarding these dishes. It took me a few days but I finally discovered the source. Voilà! They come from a woman in Paris who has an atelier tucked away in the 15^th arrondissement. Sylvie Saint- Andre Perrin.

Madame Perrin makes all of the dishes by hand, collaborating with the client in accordance with customizations including size, shape and color. When you work with French artisans who make everything to specifications, things can get a l-i-t-t-l-e bit tricky. Then, you throw in two obnoxious women from Santa Barbara explaining to the artisan that they want the dishes to match their wall color. I am sure that Madame Perrin just wanted to shoot us by the end. However, finally, our pickiness paid off. Our dishes arrived a few months later (with only two thirds of the order broken, wink wink) exactly how we wanted  them. They were the perfect yellow swirl and the perfect green swirl. I think the proper word is marbleized.

 

The process for making these dishes is quite elaborate. Psst…this is why they are expensive. The following is an excerpt from her website explaining her technique…

"Sylvie Saint-André Perrin elaborated a production by stamping in plastercasts made from models of her choice.

Stamped clays are coloured with oxides with which she is able to obtain a whole range of shades. She composes clay mixes with predominating blue, green, ochre, yellow or grey producing sinuous patterns, variously undulated but not happening haphazardly.

Stamping as she practices it reveals itself as a slow and fastidious technique allowing no more than 16 pieces to be formed each day. Clays are prepared for no more than three or four plates.”

 

I also found a long list of color combinations that are available. Here are a few examples…

Fontainebleau (green, red with black, dark green)

Lisbone (white, dark blue, yellow ochre and black)

Belle Ile (white and dark blue)

Pondichery (red, yellow and green with green and celadon)

Arcachon (dark blue, light blue, beige and white)

 

 

Even though these dishes may look sturdy, they are not. They are very very fine and delicate. They can break if you look at them funny. I would not even let Gracie help me set the table in Santa Barbara with these dishes because if she broke one I would have to kill her. We used these dishes once for a big Thanksgiving dinner with friends and I swear I thought about not inviting some of my guests because I knew they had a tendency to be clumsy and/or drunk. Getting a replacement in the exact color all the way from Paris wouldn’t be easy. So, it’s best, I figured, that those certain guests just stayed home and used their own crappy replaceable Oneida dinnerware.

 

Looking back, I kind of wish I had ordered a set in blue. Without a doubt though, I am extremely happy with my green and yellow set. Oh, you thought I bought them for the store? Nope, after a few weeks at the shop, my mother and I agreed that half of the dishes would be better off at her house and I stole the other half. I did not bring them to Paris because they are too delicate so I think my mother stole them back. Now she has the complete set.

 

You can get a complete set at HERE or HERE. However, I recommend going to the source in person. If you can afford these dishes, you can afford a flight to Paris. :-) By the way, I hope my rather brash humor does not offend anyone. Anyway, stay tuned for tomorrow’s dishes. Hint: “The O’Connell’s are stupid.”

 

Sylvie Saint André Perrin

 4 Villa Astrolabe, 75015 Paris

01 47 34 85 91

http://www.ateliersap.com/