156 
KERAMIC STUDIO 
ILLUSTRATION NO. 1 
"THE ART OF TABLE DECORATION" 
Marshal Fry 
One of the fields open to keramists which in the past has 
not received due consideration is that of Table Decoration, 
the application of the principles of Fine Art to the furnishings 
and arrangement of the table not only for special occasions 
but for informal, everyday use. 
My interest in the subject for the past year has been 
keen. During the years when I was a keramist I was always 
interested in table china, but I thought very little about the 
accompanying linen and other accessories which would be 
seen and used with it. In the years that have intervened, 
my artistic experiences have been varied, I have painted pic- 
tures and built and furnished houses, have designed and planted 
gardens, but through it all I have come to believe that the 
Art of Arts is that of Interior Decoration, — the Art which may 
contribute so greatly to our joy and peace of everyday life, 
the Art which involves and includes the many kinds of hand 
work. 
Table Decoration, as is readily seen, is a branch of In- 
terior Decoration, and is a subject peculiarly within the province 
of the keramist, the keramist who is desirous of keeping abreast 
of the times and in touch with modern tendencies. 
My own interest in planning beautiful schemes for the 
table came about in this way. At Southampton, where I spend 
my summers, the ladies of the Summer Colony exhibit table 
decorations each year at the Horticultural Show. For some 
years I have seen these exhibits, deriving much educational 
benefit from them, and when I took up teaching again it oc- 
curred to me that the Art of Table Decoration would be one 
of the most suitable subjects to introduce. 
While some of the arrangements shown by these ladies 
are evidence of their authors' great artistic perception, origin- 
ality and imagination, the majority of them have been the 
usual sort of thing, the regulation damask cloth, dainty china, 
glass and silver, with perfunctory flower arrangement, prece- 
dent being most carefully adhered to. 
Some of these ladies might be interested in seeing the 
subject treated from a totally different point of view, so I 
thought, that of Design and Composition, — and so it proved. 
Usually, the ideas for my table decorations have been 
suggested by china, pottery, pewter, silver, etc., which I either 
had or acquired, and around which I built up my arrangement. 
As for instance, my peasant scheme (illustration No. 1) was 
suggested by some peasant pottery which my mother and I 
had brought home from Brittany, years ago, plates and bowls 
with strong bands of blue and yellow and quaint little Breton 
figures painted in bright colors. 
Ordinary linen and table accessories would be wholly 
unsuited to this primitive ware. What kind of linen and ac- 
cessories would be right? Herein, I found the chief delight of 
the work, the planning of combinations, the designing and 
assembling of the right things, so that the various parts of 
each service would all be on the same plane, in the same spirit. 
The Breton pottery obviously required coarse homespun 
linen to go with it, not white, but the nice warm gray often 
found in Russian crash. A long runner was made of two 
widths of coarsest gray linen, joined by coarse crochet inser- 
tion and the whole edged with narrow crochet. The place 
doilies were round, of solid crochet worked with the coarsest 
gray linen thread. Even the napkins were the same warm 
gray with crochet edge, but of a softer, finer quality of linen. 
For candlesticks, comports, etc., silver would be too 
refined, and I had nothing suitable in pottery, but I had some 
rugged old pewter pieces and these proved just the thing. 
The huge old pewter platter was good as a centerpiece for 
flowers, and it proved possible to have a copy made of an old 
comport I had found in an antique shop, thus making the pair 
which would be needed, and with my old porringers and modern 
candlesticks the service was complete. It may help the reader 
to form a mental picture of the color when I say that the table 
itself was a deep dull blue with a gray top, linen warm gray, 
dull silver sheen of pewter, bright touches of color in the Breton 
plates and bowls, and in the center a great mass of brilliant 
violet-blue flowers (Platycodon). 
Illustration No. 2 shows the same service on a black table 
with zinnias for the flowers, zinnias of wonderful salmon shades 
merging into orange, Vermillion and violet. The color com- 
bination was truly stunning on the black table. 
The starting point of the table decoration shown in illus- 
tration No. 3 was also the china, — Canton ware, the beauti- 
ful Chinese porcelain with the landscape decoration in blue. 
I had had the china for years but never had the right things 
to use with it, although Canton lends itself to combination 
