Pour me one?

Have a great weekend.

(Tiffany and Co.)

Garden and Gun winners

Congratulations Tickled Pink and Green and Foxfire, please send your mailing information to me at cccoughlin@aol, you have won the Garden and Gun giveaway as generated by random.org.

A Table for Bedford

This article and photo by Sandy Nelson for Olympia Uncovered has me thinking about the way tables bring communities together. It occurs to me my hometown would be a great candidate for dinner tables and flower arrangements in the middle of the street, they know a little about partiesin the street but, town parties...



Bedford, New York, ca. 1990-something. I can assure you that grand hostess and doyenne, Katharine Gottsegen, who lived to the right of this shot did not sign off on the flamingos in the trees...

Never mind dinner parties this weekend, invite the whole town to dinner. Something good might happen.

The Italian Job

Come with me. Just take a peek from around the corner there and into the dining room of the Florentine city apartment of the Marchese and Marchesa di San Giuliano.



The crystal and gilt chandelier, better than any centerpiece has a right to be, is
18th century Italian and a family heirloom. The place settings are unusual by American standards; individual wine decanters at each place are not uncommon at formal dinners in Tuscany.

Crystal goblets are etched with the family monogram. The tablecloth is Sicilian antique damask and is embroidered with the San Giuliano monogram also.

The china is Ginori, Viscount. The flatware is unnamed silver and vermeil.

Photos: Italian Style, Catherine Sabino & Angelo Tondini

What would you do?

It took an act of Bedford (New York) to get me this photo. I do not want to talk about who had to get involved or what frayed old strings needed tugged in order to put this in my hands again.

It is one of those party photos one can never reenact or recapture. And it was a thing I will never forget: The gentleman in this photo, seated near me at the table, reached behind my boyfriend's chair; not clandestinely, no, not at all.

"You have beautiful feet." He said, and he touched my ankle.

"Ah, thank you." I said, a little hesitantly.

"And you always have great shoes!" He exclaimed. It happened so fast, then. A hand passed over my ankle and I felt the shoe fall from my foot. Then he did this. Not for a second, but long enough to get the photo, at least.



There was a long silence. I looked around at the rest of the faces at the table, took my shoe from his chewing teeth, put it back on my foot, and got up to dance.

"That never happened." I said to my boyfriend.

"Understood." He said.

Matouk at Rue La La

Register here to be included in the private online sale at Rue La La on Matouk fine linens including the Lulu DK line.

Not just for weddings

I was awestruck by these cakes featured in Charleston Weddings and wish they had occurred to me six years ago. While they are featured in the local wedding magazine, it seems we, as a society here, serve cake on every occasion, not exclusively for weddings (the same is true of punch and canapes, but that is another day). It is refreshing the decorators took these cakes to a new, entirely sophisticated and clean level by doing ever so little to the cake and choosing instead to perfect the select sugar flowers. Magnificent, in my humble estimation. I will have the camellia...

Prices are included as a reference for those planning a wedding.

Confederate Jasmine.

The Camellia - just my style: Sleek, with fine, fast lines and a clean floral.

The Magnolia is beautiful but the unfortunate choice of adding leaves to the middle layer really did it no favors: More flowers, fewer leaves. The rusty factor of the real late-on magnolia could have been addressed in the sugar work as well and kept the cake neat and clean.

Prices, locally: Jasmine, $450. Camellia, $750. Magnolia, $1750.

Charleston Weddings, is a big, glorious mag worth a subscription for anyone planning events, anywhere.