The Fine Art of Family Magazine

Jacqueline DeMontravel is a woman after our own heart. In her new book The Vintage Table, the editor of Romantic Homes magazine delves into the importance of entertaining family and friends using items that mean the most to you, from your family’s fine china and Grandma’s recipes to a modern centerpiece and newly purchased wine glasses. Here’s an excerpt from the introduction to her new book, which hit bookstores in January.

A beautiful and welcoming vintage table flawlessly combines heirlooms, one-of-a-kind finds, and a few unexpected accents. In such a setting, the time-honored clink of crystal and silver punctuates a room. Surprising results occur when your mother’s wedding pieces come together with newer finds. You can draw inspiration from magical places—a midsummer night’s dream, Christmas Eve, any flight of the imagination that involves fairies and, of course, a little mischief. The occasion can be a lavish affair or merely an opportunity to test your latest indulgent recipe.

A year of dining with “Vintage Vavoom,” as we call this style, is a happy one. To dine with an assortment of your favorite pieces is to live life at its most inspiring. Enchantment fills a home when it is called to perform at its most convivial—to entertain family and friends. Recipes beckon from note cards in your grandmother’s handwriting, splattered with batter. You may even bake with her cookie cutters or ones you’ve found that have a striking resemblance to hers. Food and style mesh as a feast for the eyes, and become all the more enjoyable when you eat them using beloved possessions.

A table with modern vintage style draws from the best trends of the past arranged with today’s sensibility. The designer of these settings may scour the Internet for the perfect café au lait bowl, ecstatic when she discovers a selection of unexpected colors and finds that they will go perfectly with the more time-tested items she owns. A collection of old and new pieces provides the poetic words to create a sonnet distinguished by function and style.

The vintage table setting does not follow precise rules. Arranging one is not a chess game but rather an easy, playful round of checkers. It is textural and layered. A variety of unlikely pieces somehow come together. To be a hostess with Vintage Vavoom means continually testing new ideas. You might mix and match French hemp linens with remnants found at a flea market or pull together a variety of china through shared colors and textures. Such settings offer a lot to look at—perhaps even twice, as each glance may reveal something new to tickle the senses. A table set with personalized pieces is a table like no other.

Reprinted from THE VINTAGE TABLE Copyright (c) 2010 by Jacqueline DeMontravel with the Editors of Romantic Homes Magazine. Published by Clarkson Potter, a division of Random House, Inc.

Published on March 1, 2010

Tags: Capturing, Home, Home Style, See It Their Way