Travels to Market

Tomorrow morning the car leaves for Dallas and the twice-yearly trip to market. It is here that we fill the shelves with all the new items for the holidays, get an advance look at what will be seen in shelter magazines for Fall, and sometimes have the opportunity to visit with celebrity designers and business moguls who are at the Dallas Market Center. It is an exciting time to be sure, and almost always full of neat surprises. Just yesterday I watched a video in which a designer for one of the national showrooms was elaborating on the colors that will be BIG this Fall and Winter. Guess what? We are already there!! Black and White is the pick of the Global Views showroom team for the really big colors for the season. That is good news for us because we are already using our black and white as many ways as we can. So now it will be a priority to find the really hot "accent shots" to use with our things to bring some excitement to our tables and rooms and to generate some energy into the gatherings that we attend.

The Final Touches

And now we are ready to sit back and enjoy our gala! Adding the hot pink of the cutlery and flatware adds just the right amount of color to give the table that spark that it needed to come alive. The red of the beads on the center candleholder and the green of the leaf motif are short bursts of energy created by our choice of color. It is quite a bit of fun to create a "stage" for your dinners when you let yourself be guided by what you have at hand. It is not only the things that we have, but how we use them that makes our tables come alive and add to the fun of the event.

Create the Contrast

And now we add some contrast to create the visual interest - black and white against the beautiful patina of the fruitwood table. Using the Frances Palmer plates and bowls gives us the wonderful geometry created by her use of shapes and textures. Each piece has its own unique "feel" and together they form a continuous thread that weaves its way down the tabletop. We add the brilliant napkins with a classic damask design printed on them which is a nod to our history and play on the legacy of table linens themselves. Now we need to create a spark with some additional color and perhaps some height at the center of the table to give it a focal point around which we can build the rest of our tablescape.