The Art of French Table Setting with Porcelain Designer Marie Daâge | Set the Table

What is very fun with table is that every lunch, every time you get around the table, can be a different moment. You cannot change your curtains, you cannot change the color of the walls every evening, but your table, you can be so creative, you can really change it every time, depending on the season, depending on the food, the style you want to give, so that it's like when you get dressed, you can feel completely free and creative. You're watching Homeworthy, where we believe every home has a story. So I'm going to dress the table, the little table in the little dining room, for breakfast. We have always a late breakfast. It's the weekend, so it's nice to enjoy a family meeting on Sunday morning, because during the week, it's always such a rush in the morning, so you never take time to really enjoy the beginning of the day. So for the breakfast, I love to use my little Anne Gallant collection. It's a very typical 18th century inspiration, with a little Chinaman hanging on the balancing. There was also a lot of humor at this period, when they were doing these little patterns. There was this fascination between Asia and Europe, where the Europeans were doing chinoiserie, and the Chinese market was doing a little bit European patterns for the European market. So here we are in the 17th, 18th century for this. So Anne Gallant is one of my first collections that I love to do in a mix of colors. So for the cups, I really mix. It doesn't matter the colors. Everything can be mixed up. The saucers, the cups, just as it arrives. What is very fun with the table is that every lunch, every time you get around the table, can be a different moment. You cannot change your curtains, you cannot change the color of the walls every evening, but your table, you can be so creative. You can really change it every time, depending on the season, depending on the food, the style you want to give, so that it's like when you get dressed, you can feel completely free and creative. And this is something very exciting. And that's also how I started to paint. At the beginning, it was for myself. And very quickly, I could see that it's something everyone gets interested in. When you sit around the table, the first thing the guests are doing is that they are looking around. In Limoges, it's even very rude in the town of Limoges, where the porcelain is coming from. It's very rude when you are invited at someone's, that you don't look behind the plate from who it is. Because if you don't do it, it means that you don't get interested in the place which is in front of you. And I think it's interesting to re-educate everyone for that. There was a period where porcelain was coming from Asia, with these old boats. It was the Marco Polo period, a very old period. And everyone in Europe, all the courts, were fascinated by porcelain. It was a big deal, porcelain. And of course, because everything was hand-painted, so each single piece was a piece of art. And I think that if you get educated, and if you have in your hands something which is hand-painted, you can really find again the emotion. Because a hand-painted piece is like a real flower. You see, when you look at a little pattern like this, you can see the stones, you can really feel the brushwork. And they are all a little bit different. You see the Chinaman and the stones, they will never be the same. And also the way the leaves and the tree here is painted. You can really feel the transparency of the work, the way the little Japanese man is hanging very heavy on the line. So all this is given by just a few brushstrokes. But they have to be very precise and very good. The way our painters are putting the colours on the brush, this will give the darkness and the light of the light coming here. So it looks like it's very spontaneous. But this technique, a main levée, a free hand, is very, very demanding in the virtuosity of our painters. And I think this is something fascinating. And, you know, when it arrives at the table, the table story, it's very intimate. Because table, you know, as we say, you will spend a lot of important time of your life around the table. So I think all these plates, cups are acting with your life, everyday life, important time of your life. So that's why I feel always also very honoured when I have clients who tell me, you know, when they are excited, when they build their set, they can be very much committed in the process of building their set. Because you can choose collection, colours and it's bespoke. So it means spending a lot of time in deciding how will be your plates, how will be your setting. And I have clients who come and say, you know, everyday we think of you, everyday you are with us on the table. Everyday when I'm drinking in my mug at the office, my coffee, I am with you. And so I find it very nice to think that we have this link with our clients through our little cups, mugs, goblets. So there is a very personal relation with all these clients, all these people who are really involved and finding so important to have a lovely porcelain with their everyday life and with their also special time of their life. So who am I? Maridage, created 35 years ago. My company, which started with a big love of porcelain decoration, colours, fascinated by fabrics. And since 35 years, we build collections and collections and create fantastic tables, bespoke tables. Today, Maridage is a family business because I have two daughters who joined me and a third in law. So it's growing, but still every single piece, plate, cup, fully hand-painted. So that's really our identity. We love authentic and artisanal things, as you will see also in this house reflected. So now we have the breakfast, because as I told you, this is a little dining room, so it's a more cosy place where we have breakfast, but where we have also little dinner, family dinner. Here we cannot be more than 10 people around the table, so when we are more than 10, we have to go to the other dining room. This room was not looking at this at all, in fact. Of course, the wooden floor was like this, the ceiling was already with this white poutre, we say in French. But the walls were very flat, it was very normal walls. This room was where the children used to play, so it was always a completely messy room with all the dolls on the floor and not really furnished. That's how I knew it when I arrived in the family. I don't know for what it was used before, the grand-grandparents, I don't know. The sitting room next was a billard, but this was like maybe a little office, bureau. We decided to warm it, and we created these wood panels, this wood square, to make some boiserie, to warm the room, like we had it in the big dining room, but in the big dining room it's real oak, here it's painted. We chose this grey, green, again remembering a little bit the 18th century style. The furniture, all the chairs are Louis XV, so also same period, Louis XV. Here it's Empire, the two consoles are more in the Empire period, like also the clocks and the chandeliers, which are from the Empire period. Something which I think gives a strong personality to this room is all these birds. These birds are coming from those old books of this collection of Buffon, very famous. I know it's not very good to do that, but we took the illustration of these old books, and we put them in this frame so that we can really enjoy the birds. Also when I was young, we were living in the Caribbean, in Martinique, and Audubon, who was an American painter, was very trendy in Martinique in the Caribbean. I remember in my family home we had this big picture of Audubon birds, exotic birds. Really it reminds me of when I was little, these birds always in the nice exotic landscape. It's a little bit fascinating, the birds. We have some bronze applique and this little crystal lustre, again more 18th century. A little table here, very convenient. When you have wine, you can open the wine, or when you bring the cheese, you don't want to go in the kitchen to take the cheese, you can put here what we call a dessert. Very useful for the housewife, as we don't have any more people serving us, so we have to get a little bit organised not to spend all the dinner in the kitchen, which is really important because your guests prefer to have you on the table. That's also why I'm fighting with this new way of entertaining where plates are plated, because I can remember dinners where the house, the woman who was inviting, spent the whole dinner, I mean half of the appetizer, in the kitchen because she was plating the plates, which is really so sad because you want to speak with her, you don't want her to plate the plates. So I think it's really important to come back to the French way, which in fact is the Russian way, to present the table, which means that people are sitting, you can have the nice display of plates, empty plates, so you can enjoy the beauty of the pattern of the plate, you have the food on top, and then you bring the food in dishes, which is really a good way to do it, and everyone can take what he wants, but at least when you arrive in the dining room, you have a beautiful view on these plates, charger, dinner, salad, playing together with patterns and colours. So that was my little battle for how to dress a table and how to entertain, and also it allows the host to be more free because there is just a dish, the food is on the dish and then you can enjoy, sit at the table and enjoy, because not everyone has got a cook in the kitchen, and even if there is a cook in the kitchen, this is very much the way the restaurants are serving, but at home it's so much more elegant when it's served in dishes, that's my opinion. So the inspiration is everywhere, I mean the inspiration as I say, it's in historical pieces, it can be on the old paper, on the wall, it can be fabrics, it can be the sculpture, which is a case of our latest collection, which is completely inspired by a Gothic church, it's a creation I did with my daughter in Vendôme, next to our workshop, Vendôme Flamboyant is the name of the collection, so it's a typical illustration of how to be inspired by historical buildings, it's inspired by a Gothic flamboyant church, so all the patterns are part of the sculpture of the church. It can be, you know, in the nature, for instance, one thing which is also very important in maridage are the patterns, but also the combination of colours, because we are I think quite well known for our palette, and I love to, we love to mix completely unexpected colours, and it's funny to see how one colour can become completely different when it's next to another one, and so this makes a surprise, and also this allows you to be very daring, because as each piece is hand-painted, there is a transparency, there is a brush stroke work, which allows you to be, to use very daring colours, exactly like in the nature, when you have a sunset, you have incredible crazy colours mixed together, when you look at the sunset in the nature, it looks beautiful, if you start to print, it becomes kitsch, too much, you think, oh no, that's not nice, and so on our porcelain, it's the same, as it is, you have this hand work, very natural, there are some vibes of the colours, which allows you to mix really daring colours, because the transparency, the natural feeling of the pattern on the plate, as it's hand-painted, is very different than when it's printed, so this is the magic, also, of the hand-painting technique, that we really keep, and I think today, we are nearly the only one, at this level of production, to do 100% hand-painted, because sometimes you may find things which are hand-painted, but it can be 10%, 20%, no, we are 100%, and the freehand technique allows this freedom, and this spontaneous feeling, that you have also in the nature, very generous. 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