If a dining table could speak, it would probably say “Come and eat, let’s sit and talk a while.” The dining room is central to every home, the most eloquent corner of the house, not quite as private as the bedroom or the bathroom, not quite as behind the scene as the kitchen, but open, even to the most casual guest. The dinner table, as much as what’s on it, is meant to be shared.
When Pottery Barn, Pottery Barn Kids, and West Elm, all exclusively distributed by Stores Specialists Inc., in collaboration with Susan Joven and Mia Borromeo, invited Manila’s most distinctly stylish to set up tables for a dinner (or lunch or brunch or snacks) to remember, what was foremost on the creative brief, other than showcasing the best and the latest each brand had to offer, was to incite a mood for sharing, intimacy, camaraderie, and enjoyment.
The afternoon activity held early in August at the Pottery Barn store at Central Square in BGC, Taguig, which also turned out to be a shopping party, with no less than Manila’s style set in attendance, checkbooks at the ready, gathered sought after personality Kaye Tinga, Tina Cuevas, Chito Vijandre and Ricky Toledo, Anton Barretto, Mia Borromeo, Tessa Alindogan, and Mia Borromeo, challenging each of them to come up with dream table settings for the most personal of mealtime occasions.
Cultural Center of the Philippine president Kaye Tinga, through her tablescape “Relaxed Beach Vibes,” paid homage to the weekend getaway, away from it all, and our favorite activity in these getaways, which is often doing nothing at all, such as, in her own words, “eating and sleeping.” The table, as she set it, brought in the beach. You could almost hear the sea breeze in her use of marine touches like corals and miniature fish sculptures that appeared bleached in the sun, feel like a walk along the shore in her use of sand as a base color, and snuggle up in beachside luxury in her choice of homespun runners that conjured up casitas and beach cottages.
Businesswoman and hotelier Tina Cuevas elicited a Tuscan mood with her tablesetting, which she named “Tuscany on My Mind,” a tribute to what she would personally consider one of the most romantic haunts of Europe. While based in Barcelona for over 20 years, she would frequent this region in Central Italy, where lie Florence, Pisa, Lucca, Siena, and San Gimignano. What she tried to capture on her tablescape was the gilt of sunset on the beach soaked up by the floral centerpieces, bouncing off the flatware in golden streaks, reflecting the blue of the Tuscan sky with her choice of dinnerware, and igniting dreams of, say, Castiglione della Pescaia, the most visited seaside destination in Tuscany.
Master fashion designer Chito Vijandre and lifestyle arbiter and journalist Ricky Toledo worked together on what they called “Contemporary Country,” which evoked images of brunch in bed in the French countryside, like La Breure in the region of Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes in east-central France, about five hours away by car from Paris. Inspired as it was by La Vie d’un Simple by Emile Guillaumin, their tablesetting called to mind such exquisite pleasures as champagne at breakfast, replete with a wooden four-poster around which they put an ice bucket chilling a bottle of the bubbly, fabrics and rugs in various shades beiges and creams setting off pink prints, a curio cabinet-looking a service tray for pastries, a trunk made of old wood at the foot of the bed upon which breakfast, along with morning reading materials, as well as, beyond, vivid in the imagination, a vineyard, a rose garden, an olive grove, lavender fields, river gorges, and romantic lakes.
Design expert Anton Barretto’s table is an ode to the outdoors. “Al Fresco Entertaining” featured a sense of handiwork and lots of color to make it contrast to nature yet also complement it, replete with surprise elements like a couch and a bench alongside the weather-proof main dining table. He mixed and matched the components to mimic the richness of nature, using variations in the height of the tabletop accessories such as candles and candleholders, in the popups on the color theme and the textures of the napkins, placemats, ornamental vessels, throwpillows, and table runner, among other things.
Metals informed the dining table, “Effortless Elegance,” set by interior designer and artist Tessa Alindogan, whose personal style is just as effortlessly chic, a contemporary interpretation of the classic, a modern take on old-world refinements. The color scheme, soothing to the senses, rich yet subtly so, was carried out with the careful use of gold-rimmed wine glasses, glassware the color of copper, a sculpture in brass, a touch of steampunk tamed further by the Soto dining table and its tempered glass oval top and subtly arched cement legs.
Style arbiter Mia Borromeo’s “Afternoon Tea in Blue and White” was a kiddie dream, designed specifically for children, replete with stuffed animals in the form of a unicorn and an elephant. In a palette that imitated the clear, blue sky combined with bright white, a combination present in the hydrangeas she kept in blue-and-white ceramic pots to adorn the table, she made purity and tranquility, if not even innocence, an underlying concept for her table setting. Bird patterns on the pottery suggested a flight of fancy or otherwise gave a nod to the boundless imagination that made childhood so free yet life-defining.
What would be your table like if you were to invite us to partake of its offerings? All these designers recommend keeping your mind open, but also playing up your personal style. Pottery Barn, Pottery Barn Kids, and West Elm are at Central Square at Bonifacio High Street and at Estancia in Capitol Commons. Trunc.ph