A Tablescape of Collected Treasures

One of my favorite things to do is hunt treasures, not buried treasure of gold and silver but small objects of beauty. I especially enjoy hunting treasures while traveling. This table is set with many collected treasures.

Here’s another view.

I love the printed tin plates. They are illustrations from vintage children’s books. I first saw them on this post at My French Country Home. When my daughter and I were planning our trip to Europe back in the spring, Au Bain Marie was at the top of my list for Paris! The store has so many beautiful things it was hard to choose something. Let’s take a closer look at the plates.

Each of the six plates has a different design.

The wicker chargers were purchased online from Nell Hill’s.

The white service plates were purchased at Homegoods.

I made the linen napkins using this tutorial from Yvonne at Stone Gable.

The flatware is vintage silverplate. I bought it because it is almost identical to my sterling pattern and I can use them together when I need extra. I have a lot of silverware, possibly 100 place settings!! I have found that I can by vintage silver plated flatware that is a nice weight for much less than I can replace my stainless flatware. Often I have found pieces for less than $1 per piece whereas my stainless flatware is now $75 for a five piece place setting! Crazy!

The vintage pewter bread plates were bought from an antique store. Many of my best finds come from antique booths that are going out of business with drastically reduced prices!

The cranberry tumblers were purchased from a local shop a number of years ago. I wish that I had more than 4! They are a great accent for several of my sets of dinnerware.

The fish are vintage ornamental roof tiles that I found at a market in China. You can read about one of my trips to China here. I bought a pair of these and wrapped them in clothes and carried them in my suitcase. They survived the long journey with just a chip or two.

The mercury glass votives were purchased at Target several years ago.

The vintage pewter salt and pepper mills were bought at my favorite second hand store.

This beautiful bowl of orchids was purchased at an estate sale! Another shopper was holding the bowl of orchids and I asked her if they were real. She answered that no, they were fake. About that time, the operator of the sale walked up and said “be careful with those. They are real and they will break.” The other shopper immediately put them back down and said “ Well I can’t take them if they’re real because they will die.”  Exercising a lot of restraint and self control, I said in my sweetest voice, “well I’ll take them if you can’t use them!!!” I have had great success with orchids and will do a post one day.

I added the photo above to show the impact of a centerpiece. It makes a tremendous difference.

You can read about the dining table project here.

The antique oak chairs  are used for extra seating when needed. You can read about them here. I enjoyed collecting these treasures and using them all together. I have so many posts to catch up on but I have about a dozen projects going on now! I hope you will visit again soon to read about them.

I’m linking to Grace at Home at Imparting Grace and to Tabletop Thursday at Between Naps on the Porch.