Guest Post by Marlene M. Kristoff

Style at a Certain Age Saturday guest editor Marlene M. Kristoff shares luxury retail, home, and design ideas.

Creating your Happy Thanksgiving Table! xoxo MMK

Happy Thanksgiving Weekend 2021!! Where ever you may be!

Feasts for 2 or 20 can be fun and gracious!

Whether you are planning a charming sit-down dinner or chic buffet with everyone feeling a bit impromptu; creating exciting tables equals JOY – no matter where you celebrate!!

For me, it is one of the special, simple pleasures in life!

Let your table reflect your passion for art, color, design, and nature…or a combination! It can be set in the library, family, living, dining room, or possibly out of doors!

Maybe, your inspiration will come from a favorite painting like Diego Rivera’s famed, Flower Day (Dia de Flores) 1957, with its gorgeous warmth and feeling…and fabulous calla lilies.

Napkins | Plates | Tablecloth

Rattan Charger 

Benchmark Bouquets

Charming Bouquet

Or, maybe yours will come from the cool abstraction of Georgia O’Keeffe’s Nature Forms – Gaspé 1932 (a city in Canada). Think silver, aquas, burgundy, avocado green…modern, and ethereal.

Georgia O’Keeffe Print

Haviland Plate

Hurricane

Royal Crown Derby Plates

Bernadaud Plate | Sferra Cocktail Napkin

Christofle Flatware

Flatware

Your special inspiration may also come from a favorite dinner plate, textile or tree!! As we give thanks this holiday, it seems most appropriate to share images, colors, and passions from all over the world! Friends in London, Paris, Munich, and Switzerland also enjoy our wonderful tradition and celebrate too!!

Your table design can be a way to share a bit of your personality and meaning with those you love. Casual or formal – modern or traditional with inherited dinnerware, recent wedding gift, from an antiquing jaunt, or memorable trip. Let your table reflect you, your family, guests, or all!!

This year you may be hosting…again finally…or maybe it is your first, as a newlywed!! Oh, I remember mine…was working wildly in Boston retailing. My dear, new in-laws were coming!! Exhausted as I was, I loved creating homemade popovers and all, proving I could cook, entertain and bring home some bacon! Very happy memories!! Our table was set with Lenox Autumn designed in 1918, with its charming raised enamel on ivory bone china. It remains one of the most beautiful dinnerware patterns of all time. Lenox, then made in America, is the prized china beloved by generations of First Ladies in our White House Collections.

White House China

Lenox China

Today, Gold and Silver rimmed dinnerware is dishwasher safe…which many do not realize. Manufacturers realized that using family or metallic rimmed china required hand washing. As charming as it is to wash and dry together, after a family dinner; it was time-consuming and definitely determined how often the dinnerware was being used – not so much! Thus, around 1979 technology revolutionized the industry. Now, most are dishwasher-friendly. Do check to make sure how old your patterns are to be safe!! Please – please!

Collecting dinnerware is one of my little passions. Mixing & matching is fun and creative. It is creating a “wardrobe for your culinary delights!” You can enjoy Bread and Butter plates for chic cocktail parties or with coffee, tea, and a sweet! The Dessert-Salad plate has many lives. It is fabulous for petite déjeuner. As a salad plate, it creates numerous styles of place settings with classic band dinner plates, or can be enjoyed for “just dessert!”

Crown Derby Salad Plate

Each place setting, hors d’hoevres plate, or dessert does not have to match to be exciting!! Great conversations can begin around their unique designs. When everyone has a different pattern, they are easy to spot if you set it down “somewhere” at the gathering!! Plates are often gifted or passed from generation to generation, or you may fall in love with a fabulous – unexpected design on a special trip across the pond, on a local shopping jaunt, or while museum-going! I recently found 2 bread and butter from a classic San Francisco restaurant L’Étoile that closed years ago on Nob Hill. It held many happy memories, so voila!! They became a very special birthday present from a friend who happens to share these memories!

Focal table designs could also take inspiration from our beautiful Fall seasonal colors and textures in your own backyard! From the warmth of golds, crimson, cinnamon, and sage or rustic woven rattans, feathers, leaves, or branches. All are elements of autumnal beauty for centerpieces or simple vases.

Corrine Vase

A single bloom at each place setting or in the powder or guest room is simple and elegant. Blossoms of all sorts provide charming, chic variations for your home. Clustering one flower can be quite dramatic too!

MacKenzie Childs Vase

Until next week…enjoy a wonderful celebration, surrounded by all you love!!

Have a very Happy Thanksgiving and start to a beautiful holiday season! xoxo MMK

Guest Post by Marlene M. Kristoff

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Beth Djalali

is the Founder and CEO of Style at a Certain Age. She writes Sundays-Fridays on all topics ranging from fashion, health, wellness, home design and more.

She’s 63, 5’8, and size 8.

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