Styling: Thanksgiving Tablescape

We were asked to design a tablescape for a client's ten-person Thanksgiving dinner. To keep costs down, we used as much of her own wares as possible, which was relatively easy because she had some great stuff to work with!

We decided early on to deviate from traditional Thanksgiving themes involving gourds and dried corn (although there's nothing wrong with a crazy, wart-y gourd every once in a while!) Instead, we took inspiration from the colors in the patterned porcelain dinnerware, pulled out a rich autumn palette of deep gold, red and yellow for the flowers and added a little sophistication and texture with teal linen napkins and cut glass Waterford vases.

On the client's black tablecloth, we arranged her grandmother's stunning Limoge china and her mother-in-law's silverware (beautifully engraved with an initial). We wrapped new napkins from Crate and Barrel with gold cords from Tinsel Trading Company and buttons from M & J Trimming for inexpensive, handmade bespoke napkin rings.

We filled her own collection of vases with a selection of fresh flowers from a sidewalk flower vendor and arranged her silver candlesticks among the vases to contrast with the gold accents on the dishes and napkin rings.

We love projects like this. We were extremely pleased with the result and, with all the winter holidays right around the corner, we hope to do more such projects in the future. See more images at FRISSON.