China Galore!

You might wonder what difference can a plate make? Excellent question! Setting a table with imagination — think art installation, think many patterns of plates — may cause all manner of things to happen. Empires have risen and fallen around the dinner table. We ourselves might not be able to mend the world but we can tidy up our corner of it. Dinner by dinner we make life worth living for ourselves and others. One way is by having fun setting the table.

An opportunity has arisen to collect bits and pieces, stacks and sets, china considered best in the world; Richard Ginoi, Haviland, Royal Crown Derby, Mottehedah, Herend, Gien. Charleston’s finest wedding and gift store shut down resulting in a porcelain treasure trove. The owner of Vieuxtemps is selling off a myriad of marvels at a discount. If you relish adding zing to your dinners do something lickety-split. (This post is not sponsored!)

A single dinner plate or a set of twelve is not a big investment but an unremitting delight. Collecting these things pays dividends over and over and over, not in interest payments but in creating settings that facilitate interesting conversations and connections.

Owning multiple sets gives you tools and options to continually create unique settings. Unify the table according to your own rules. Choose plates with a similar feature from different sets, such as all rims, or medallions, or in the same color way. Have fun finding out who notices your roast chicken served on different color bird plates. Design useful centerpieces, lining chargers down the center of the table and topped with food, like serving platters. Fill wide rimmed tea cups with soup, for a first course. Collect dozens of different tea cups to host an annual mother daughter holiday tea party.  

Royal Crown Derby bird plates

Herend tea cups

Different patterns, different chargers...

Different makes (Haviland & Ginori) same color way

Now don’t get me wrong. There is a certain charm to our grandmother’s and great grandmother’s match-y match-y dining tables — do remember that their handbags and shoes, coats and hats, nail and lipstick matched too. That was the way it was. Now we live in a diverse society free to express many moods, create endless experiences and introduce all kinds of people to each other, right from our dining tables. Why not do it in the most imaginative way possible to create a scene and make things of consequence occur at and from your table?

Consider:

- A set of six different color bird plates from ultra-luxury Royal Crown Derby.

- Sets of Herend tea cups and saucers to mix and match for hosting mother daughter holiday tea parties on an afternoon between Christmas and the New Year.

- Six or twelve plain and patterned chargers to mix plus use as serving platters.

- Sets of plates of one make but with different patterns and color ways that work together.

- Sets with central medallions.

For more information:

Email info@vieuxtemps.net

DM via Instagram @UndertheFiggTree

The Point of Tea

I am a tea addict. My mornings begin with a comforting mug of milky tea and honey, a cup of smokey Hu-Kwa highlights my afternoons. My favorite characters in fiction join my tea habit. The redoubtable Dowager Countess in Downtown Abbey insists there is always something particular to discuss at tea. In Alexander McCall Smith’s The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Series, Precious Ramotswe, the owner of a small detective agency in Gaborone, makes the case for regular tea breaks throughout the day. Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, in Amor Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow puts the tea matter perfectly:

…A prompt dispensing of pleasantries and a quick shift to the business at hand [is] utterly in keeping with the etiquette of tea — perhaps even essential to the institution… Before the first cake was sampled the purpose of the invitation would be laid upon the table… The most accomplished of hostesses could signal the transition with a word of her choosing. For the Count’s grandmother, the word had been Now, as in Now, …I have heard some distressing things about you, my boy…. For Princess Poliakova, a perennial victim of her own heart, it had been Oh… Oh, Alexander, I have made a terrible mistake…

The point of tea is different than the point of a breakfast meeting, a ladies luncheon or a dinner party. Some meals have no point but tea does and that’s what makes the ritual special. Tea calms, tea puts things into perspective, tea has a long history around the world. We are focusing on afternoon tea here and the elegant accoutrements of porcelain cups, dedicated tea pot, silver spoons, bite size sandwiches and scones; all of which make a cup full of hot liquid become a memorable break anywhere. A cup of tea even soothed the jangled nerves of Londoners under bombardment during World War II. Whether a flighty or weighty topic is discussed, the result is similar: one feels better about one’s life after tea. There is almost nothing one can’t face after a bracing cup of tea.

Two favorite tea parties:

Teas for two. My friend Inga Owen was born in the early 1900’s and raised in a palace in Sweden. During our tea afternoons Inga told stories about etiquette and dressing that were part of her young aristocratic life in Stockholm. I baked scones, Inga poured Hu-Kwa tea while we quickly dispensed with our obligatory remarks on this and that, hardly waiting to dive in on what needed to be discussed. The moment Inga poured the tea we shifted to the weighty matters at hand.

Inga stuck to a hard and fast rule in everything: the simpler, the more elegant. Her tea menu was a case in point. Inga’s Tea Menu consisted of cucumber sandwiches and a pot of Hu-Kwa tea. She allowed me to gild the lily by adding scones but it took convincing to change her strict rules!

Teas for many. Teas for a group of mothers and daughters (and grandmothers) is a celebration tea. The conversations will be wide ranging, but a single finer point is made — daughters feel the camaraderie and connections of females getting together, often dressing up, sipping and nibbling special foods, and taking time out to celebrate nothing much, the whole point!

MOTHER & DAUGHTER TEA MENU -

Little girls like sweets more than sandwiches, especially vegetable and fish sandwhiches, so the menu is titled in the cookie direction...

• Tomato sandwiches

• Smoked Salmon sandwiches

• Cucumber sandwiches

• Orange scones

• Brandy snaps

• Almond biscotti

• Lemon mounds 

Goodbye for now. Time to put the kettle on.

Tea Party Class

How does one even think of an afternoon tea party during the dog days of Summer in Charleston? Creatively, with new eyes!

Anyone, anytime, can learn to enjoy a proper tea time and the accompanying spread.

One of the Dean’s favorite men, a cross between Jimmy Stewart and Mr. Rogers, organizes a week long camp for his grandchildren. His camp includes a range of lessons and activities from tennis, sailing, art history, and even how to flip an omelette, which he teaches himself. He recruits all kinds of teachers for his grandchildren's summer visits. This year he asked the Charleston Academy to teach a tea party class to two smart granddaughters, aged nine and twelve. 

First order of business, and perhaps why the Academy of Domestic Pursuits is more fun than any other school in the country, was getting Granddad situated, satisfied, amused, and interested in tea parties. The Dean had her two charges learning how to make an Old Fashioned cocktail for their grandfather while the Granddad sat spellbound. Two young girls learning bartender tips! Why not? The Dean learned how to make an extraordinary Old Fashioned from FIG’s very hip bartender, Andrew King. Tricks Andrew uses include not one but two cocktail glasses, two different kinds of ice, and stirring for 35 seconds. (Disclaimer: of course the Dean explained to the girls that this was an adult drink made of brown liquor they would no doubt find repulsive.)

Next up, three "mocktails" sans rye: soda water, a dash of peach bitters, balloon ice, and a garnish of orange slices plus Luxardo cherries stabbed with a toothpick. Once armed and ready to tackle the tea tasks that lay ahead, the girls reviewed and thankfully approved the menu of cream scones and cucumber tea sandwiches.

For the cream scones, the girls had to decide on two important issues. Yellow raisins or none? Triangles or round? Even though the Dean called the raisins ‘golden’ instead of yellow, both girls shook their heads to say no raisins of any color. The shape choice was easier, although one chose round and the other, triangles. Then the fine arts of measuring, mixing, rolling and cutting; these sisters came well-versed in many baking techniques. One has already invented a recipe involving a marshmallow injected with colored frosting to get her school friends sugared up at birthday parties. 

Scones in the oven, cucumbers out of fridge! But before tea sandwiches, one essential truth: when you are making a simple recipe, each ingredient needs to be of the very best quality because you cannot hide taste. In this case, the bread, butter, salt, and even the cucumber need to be super delicious. Nothing got past the older sister; she said she tastes the difference between the butters her mom buys. But luckily both could vouch Pepperidge Farm which sells very thin white and wheat breads. The company must have started in the tea sandwich business, so perfect are those breads for that purpose. 

A tip: ensure the bread does not get too soggy by placing paper-thin disks of cucumber on a paper towel and sprinkling lightly with salt. Allow them to weep gently into the paper towel while you butter the bread and trim the crusts. After a good cry, the cucumbers will not slime up your sandwiches and the delicate cucumber flavor is intensified.

Scones out of the oven -- a lesson in using an oven mitt and rack! The girls set a table on their grandparent’s screened porch, arranged scones on one platter and sandwiches on another, then filled ice buckets with ice cubes. The hot weather problem was brilliantly solved by these two young ladies. Instead of hot tea, they decided that we would enjoy ice cold water from their their grandmothers porcelain tea cups. 

Even the Dean was amazed how a pile of scones disappeared before teatime was half over. Each girl filled her tiny stomach with at least a dozen scones first, then cucumber sandwiches while sipping ice water, pinkies raised. The party discussed the weighty matters of birthday parties -- invitations, venues, and what to do about hurt feelings when you are left off of the guestlist. 

If your tea party is at any other time of the year than July or August, or indoors with the air conditioner working overtime, then you should know that the tea we take at the Academy comes from the UK: Resolution Tea from Botham’s of Whitby. In fact, we are addicted. Yes, overseas postage nowadays tends to make one’s eyes water. But we did the math and six boxes of one hundred tea bags plus shipping comes to less than nineteen cents per bag -- well worth it for such an enduring and enjoyable tradition.