Tabletop Crawling with New Life and Buzzing Color

Ted Baker Portmeirion Rosie Lee Collection 5-Piece Dinner Set

Unexpected colors and patterns, along with a touch of whimsy, were some of the dominate trends emerging from the latest tabletop collections showcased this spring. You could say that tabletop is crawling with new life when you consider all the bugs and critters that could be found on pieces ranging from the traditional dinner plate to the tiered cake stand. Unexpected color trends also created a buzz for tablescapes, with new incarnations of blue providing an updated take on the classic blue and white color scheme beloved by so many for centuries.

The influence of runway fashion trickling down to housewares could be seen in Ted Baker’s Rosie Lee Collection for Portmeirion Group. The designer created a series of fine bone china dinnerware featuring a nod to vintage floral patterns, colors and shapes that drew inspiration from the Ted Baker Spring/Summer 2015 apparel collection.

Ted Baker Portmeirion Rosie Lee Collection

The formal Rosie Lee collection has a floral pattern of roses in various states of bloom with dragonflies sparsely perched here and there or coming in for a graceful landing. The pieces have either a black or white base, with select items in a pastel lemon or mint color base. The roses are assorted pastels in pink, lilac, and lemon, with leaves and stems done in a darker moody green for an overall look of a garden seen through overcast skies. All of the 41 pieces in the collection are hand gilded with 22-karat gold on the rims, or on the knobs of lidded items like the covered butter pat or teapot. The collection of varying hues and concentrations of patterns lends to mixing and matching for a modern take on table setting.

“From the beginning Portmeirion has pushed the boundaries of the tabletop category,” explains Wendy Motlaq, Corporate Vice President of Portmeirion Group USA. “When Susan Williams-Ellis launched her ground breaking Botanic Garden design in the 1970s it featured mismatched dinnerware before any other manufacturer. Ted Baker has done the same and shaken up the fashion world. The creation of Rosie Lee is a natural combination for Portmeirion and Ted Baker.”

PROUNA My Honeybee Tea Cup & Saucer

Indeed, taking a mix and match approach to a table layout is a great way of updating tabletop, asserts interior designer Jennifer McGee, of Jennifer McGee Design, Inc. based in New York City.

“Tabletop has become much more lifestyle and much more relaxed,” says McGee, who began her interior design firm 16 years ago. “I think people are mixing it, they’re not doing the traditional china sets anymore. It’s much more about modern luxury and contemporizing what is different about tabletop. It’s like what I do with my clients, they may have something from their grandmother, but we’re not putting the entire table set together … They’re mixing in many more things. Colors are a fun thing to mix into your traditional mix of patterns.”

From PROUNA’s Jewelry Collections, My Honeybee and My Ladybug are fine bone china lines that combine the namesake bugs along with distinctive colors and patterns for each set. My Honeybee features a firey orange that takes on a honeycomb pattern in honey yellow along the rim of the dinner plate and is solid orange around the rim of the charger plate. My Ladybug has a deep maroon jewel tone for the red and black ladybugs to stand out against. Patterned items from My Ladybug radiate abstract lines in gold and a lighter shade of maroon. Both collections feature their namesake critter jeweled in Swarovski crystals accents that are delicately done in moderation so as not to be overwhelming.

PROUNA My Ladybug Tea Cup & Saucer

Adding even further to the element of surprise is the fact that the dinnerware is dishwasher safe. Tests done by the Reckitt Benckiser Produktion Gmbh laboratory in Germany, have proven the Swarovski crystals on the Jewelry collections by PROUNA can endure 700 washing cycles in the dishwasher. However, PROUNA highly recommends hand washing to protect the real 24-karat gold that is hand-painted on the dishes.

Interior designer John Douglas Eason, of John Douglas Eason Interior Design in New York City, noted that such a pairing of patterns and colors along with the crystals adds up to an unexpected take on tabletop that is evidence of this larger overarching theme of colors and patterns prevalent at the moment.

“I am so not your Swarovski crystal kind of guy, but there’s all of this beautiful porcelain from PROUNA that has Swarovski crystals embedded into it and it’s all dishwasher safe,” says Eason, who has been in the interior design business for 25 years now. “That’s another thing that just blows me away. In the world I grew up in and started in the design world, if you have beautiful and precious things, they all had to be hand washed. Can you imagine having this beautiful plate with these Swarovski crystals and you can pop it in your dishwasher after a dinner party? I couldn’t believe it … And again, I am so not a crystal guy, but I look at it and it’s beautiful! And that’s a bit of what I am seeing, just these beautiful and interesting patterns.”

Richard Ginori Italian Pois Collection Rim Soup Plate

At Richard Ginori, colors and patterns definitely take on an unexpected twist with two different lines from the Italian brand. The Italian Pois collection of porcelain for everyday use has wild strawberries, vermilion ladybugs and small black polka dots embellishing iconic dish shapes from various Richard Ginori dinnerware collections, all outlined with black edging. The collection is available in a complete assortment of tableware, tea and coffee settings and is complemented with matching accessories and serving pieces, such as coffee mugs and a butter dish.

Further pushing the boundaries of unexpected colors and patterns is the Insetti Collection from Richard Ginori. Insetti is a range of critters done in porcelain with some of Richard Ginori’s most popular dinnerware patterns hand-painted on. The collection features symbolic insects like the butterfly, scarab, stag beetle, cicada, and grasshopper in white with colorful designs painted on in a single color, some with gold accents. The collection of critters could be used for stylish place settings, napkin paperweights, or to create a unique centerpiece. The whimsy ante is upped even further with the Insetti pieces that go meta and have insect designs painted on them featuring ants or different winged bugs.

Insetti Collection from Richard Ginori

“I saw a little bit of whimsy that I thought was really fun,” says McGee, recalling the recent New York Table Top Show and High Point Market that she attended. “I always love to add whimsy to any table. There was a bug theme going on that I saw with a couple different lines that were done artistically and that I thought was fun.”

Villeroy & Boch Floreana Collection

In a different direction, but still playing on the unexpected, dinnerware done in shades of blue stood out for the unconventional patterns it took on as well as the fresh approach to colorization. Floreana from Villeroy & Boch is premium porcelain with a blue floral pattern that is contemporary because of the watercolor technique used to give it a vintage yet modern look. The blue and white dinnerware is perfect for mixing and matching with a plain white set or with the other Floreana colors that are also available in green or red.

The Floreana platter features a tight floral pattern done intricately across the entire dish in all blue with white outlines. Smaller dishes, like the espresso plate, reverse this and reserve the pattern for only the rim of the dish done in white with blue outlines. The effect is one that is mesmerizing when the collection is viewed in entirety along with the dinner plates and mugs that feature a much larger and more willowy floral that is still complementary but different.

Q Squared Cambridge Rose (top) and Hampton Toile (bottom)

Q Squared has also delved into the blues for two different lines of melamine dinnerware. Cambridge Rose adds a touch of vintage English art and romance in the traditional blue china color. Hampton Toile has a delicate feeling thanks to the hand-drawn light blue design that showcases peacocks and florals while recalling a vintage exoticism. The fact that the collections are done in melamine that is nearly unidentifiable as such, until you read the fine print or go to grab them, adds another modern twist to the collections.

This story was originally published in the June 2015 issue of Kitchenware News, a publication of Oser Communications Group.