Fall Tablescape: Cornucopia, Canyon, Currier, Color!

Some of my favorite things about fall include cooler temperatures (even if only in the mornings and evenings), a clearer blue sky than the blanket of summer haze, and more intense color, caused by a natural combination of the slant and brightness of the sun, changing leaves, and the last hurrahs of the garden.

My tablescape today is the compilation of all these things:

Cornucopia, Canyon, Currier, Color!

I was happy to return home from a recent cross-country trip, and slip into the mood for fall. As part of that prelude to fall, I wanted to create a tablescape of my interpretation of some of the best of the season, a cornucopia, if you will.

The wicker cornucopia (which I already had) started with a simple fresh bouquet of flowers and greens cut from my garden: Mexican sunflowers, butterfly bush, periwinkle, white lavender, and Otto Luykens foliage. I added simple fruit - orange, pear and apples - to the mix, along with Indian corn, a few miniature pumpkins, and nuts gathered from daily walks, and it casually became my table centerpiece.

After nixing several choices from my stash of vintage textiles, I finally settled on a pale yellow damask cloth as my base, and used the flip side of the handsewn, spiral runner I purchased last year and used in this post.

Many of the sights we took in on our trip included some of our National Parks, including the ever-popular Grand Canyon. It was by accident that I discovered, earlier in our travels, one of the souvenirs I knew I wanted from this trip. It was a set of Pendleton-USA's National Park series jacquard napkins; specifically, those inspired by Grand Canyon National Park (one of the four available designs and a park which we planned to visit). BAM! They were available at the Canyon Village Market! Rich in color and texture, I knew they'd make the perfect accessory to the table I had in mind. The brass napkin rings were a great purchase from blogging friend, Diana, of Adirondack Girl at Heart's Vintage Shop.

I pulled out my vintage Currier and Ives American Homestead series china (manufactured 1950 - 1986). Each piece within the place settings  (along with the serving pieces) are titled differently, and each title depicts familiar scenes of working families' homesteads (see photo below, with those titles on various pieces). I bought the china from a neighbor's yard sale, and used only a portion of it to set a prior table in July (see those posts here and here). Many of you commented on your memories of this china in your own households; my mother had it too. :)

For place markers, I picked up pine cones from the neighborhood and stood them in copper peat pots. Name cards can easily be tucked between the cone petals.

The wood-like texture of the chargers are faux - an inexpensive Pier 1 sale purchase, as are the golden amber glasses (acrylic!). The flatware is vintage Oneida (1945), in the Bordeaux pattern, yet another nod to the harvest season with grape clusters on the handles.

Once completed, there was something very satisfying in the play of color and textures of this tablescape for me. It definitely was a good springboard for adding a few more touches of fall which soon began to crop up through the higher trafficked areas of our home. Those changes will soon be seen in a post to come.

Whether you're embracing changes in the season indoors or outdoors, I hope there's a sense of inner peace in whatever you're doing and wherever you are.

Thanks for your visit at the table today. I hope you leave a bit inspired, and feel free to leave a comment! By the way, I am a no-revenue blog, and no compensation was received for mention of any products used in this or any other tablescape I create for my blog posts.

(A special thank you to Kathryn at The Dedicated House "Make It Pretty Week #193 , Diana at Vintage Charm #50, and Sharon at Blue Willow House for featuring this post!)

Rita C. at Panoply

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