The Grand Millennial Style - "A Return To Where Substance Meets Style"

 

 

Our Dining Table set with my Grandmother's China inherited and now made modern

Welcome to our online store and blog.

Every Monday and Friday we feature things, people or places that inspire us. This Monday we feature the new Grand Millennial Style that is taking the country by storm. 

As covid has relegated all of us to our homes many people in the southern states of the USA have started to entertain again. Looking inside their own closets mixing and matching family heirlooms be it in fashion or home decor it has engaged everyone even us to go shopping in our closets.

The essence of the Grandmillennial Style involves a young (ish) person taking ownership of granny's needlepoint pillows and tasseled lampshades and making them share space with their existing mid-century modern/Scandinavian/farmhouse decor.

Grand Millennial Style

Grandmillennial style re-imagines old-school design fads and combines them with contemporary looks. The resurgence of this specific design style is a rebellion against the mid-century modern look that has ruled interior spaces for the past several years. "Each generation rebels against the one previous, so the millennials who are now furnishing homes are rebelling against their parents and their style," interior designer Kevin Isbell told Better Homes and Gardens. "Raised during the mass market furniture explosion, they are rebelling against the monochromatic catalog looks that they were raised with and are looking to earlier generations for inspiration."

Being a Tabletop company I used the ethos and applied it to my latest Tablescape.

Items used to set my table:

 

Table Cloth:

Thomas Fuchs for Donghia

 

Dapper and debonair, the son of tailor from a steel town in western Pennsylvania, Angelo Donghia (1935–85) possessed an easy confidence about his prodigious talents that enabled him to blaze new trails as both a designer and businessman. As he told an interviewer in 1977, “just because I said in 1959, ‘I’m going to be an interior designer,’ doesn’t mean that I should die being an interior designer. I’d like to write a book. I’d like to do a movie. I’d like to do everything.”

Thomas Fuchs For Donghia Espadrille Upholstery utilized as Tablecloth

Still, he will likely be best known for the way in ’70s he fused glam maximalism with cool minimalism: rooms with foil ceilings, lacquered walls, bare windows and bleached floors, furnished with groupings of plump frameless chairs and sofas, suited in gray flannel or white duck or creamy satin, mixed with a few antique showstoppers and big tropical plants. You might call the look Disco Deco, an updated interpretation of the sets of the stylish Hollywood movies of the ’30s that Donghia loved so well as a boy. Whatever you call it, the glitterati of that era — Woody Allen, Burt Bacharach, Steve Martin, Liza Minnelli, Diana Ross, Barbara Walters and yes, even Donald Trump — sought out Donghia to get it.

Thomas (Fuchs) went on to take over as design director at Donghia for fabrics / textiles, murano glass lighting, furniture and mirrors.  

Charles Christofle

Silverware / Flatware:

Wedding Gift from my parents Chistofle Talisman Flatware.

Charles Christofle founded the company that bears his name in 1830. Originally a jeweler, he bought the patents silver plating and electrolytic gilding of gold in 1842. As a goldsmith, he transformed ceremonial items and everyday objects: from jewelry to cutlery, gold smithery to sculptures, and decorative objects to tableware. This is how silver came to be an integral player in art of living today.

In 1986, Bernard Yot and Studio Christofle designed Talisman, inspired by the Art Deco style.
It is a collection unlike any other, that celebrates color and the uniqueness of the hosts who chooses it.

Talisman Collection

Talisman is a precious collection, made to measure only. To the eyes’ delight, the collection is available in an infinite number of colors.
The design of the curved silver-plated metal ribs emphasizes the matt finish of the chosen color with its shine. The Talisman collection is available for tableware such as forks, knives and  spoons but also in serving cutlery.

Charles E. Haviland

China / Dishware:

Haviland Limoges Shalimar Pattern 

By Frederick Haviland 1975

In 1840, David Haviland, who had a china shop in New York City, made his first trip to France to establish an alliance with a manufacturer who could create pieces of porcelain for the American trade. He eventually settled in Limoges, France to oversee production. This was near the source of the abundant kaolin mines, the special white clay unique to Limoges porcelain. He established his own company in 1853 to produce china specifically for the American market.

Shalimar Pattern, Louis Xv, Multicolor Flowers

There were numerous china manufacturers in Limoges, but the Haviland Company was the first to have artists on site to do the decorating. After the Civil War, David sent his son, Théodore, to the U.S. to handle distribution and marketing. Production dramatically increased and another son, Charles Edward Haviland, took over management of the firm from his father. Many talented artists were engaged and soon the lithograph or transfer technique of decoration was developed. White House china sets were designed for Presidents Lincoln, Grant, Hayes and Harrison. But the Victorian housewife was the primary customer with a wide variety of patterns to choose.

Thomas Fuchs & Michou Mahtani of Thomas Fuchs Creative

Drinkware / Murano Drinking Glasses: 

Thomas Fuchs: 18K Gold and White Swirl Drinking Glass

Venetian glassmaking originated some 1,500 years ago, when glassmakers from Aquileia, Italy, made the voyage to the Venetian lagoon to escape attacks by barbarians during the Roman Empire. Glassmakers who relocated from Byzantium and the Middle East further enriched the talent pool in the city. There, molded glass was affixed to the ceiling of lavishly decorated public bathhouses, providing illumination and delight.­­­­­ Additional uses for glass would soon emerge in the form of beads, mosaics, jewelry, mirrors and windows. While these products were widely exported, they were available only to the wealthy, as glass was then considered an extremely extravagant and valuable commodity.

Thomas Fuchs Creative 18K Gold Swirl Drinking Glasses

Today Thomas and I venture to Murano several times a year while he plays in the oven for hours concocting the alchemy of glass. Thomas always says that the instant facniation that one min uts sand and ask the next is a tanglie object is what keep him dreaming of forms and colour combinations. he can come up with 

 

5 steps that help make you look like you had a professional set your table!

 

4 Design Legends Living On One Table 

Step 1: Pick a colour in the china pattern and buy or get a table cloth with the same colour but with a much more graphic or modern design, here I found a piece of left over upholstery fabric we used to cover a chair I turned into a table cloth edges frayed and all to match the legendary French Haviland Limoges China I inherited from my Grandmother 

Thomas Fuchs 18K Gold & White Swirl Drinking Glass

Step 2: Layer the table, find a drinking glass in a contrasting color than the table cloth and your china pattern here I used our Murano Glass  which we deign and manufacture with a pattern that contrasts the stripes in the table cloth and the floral pattern in the plates

 

Christofle Talisman Pattern Silverware 

Step 3: Use cutlery /flatware that ties into the theme of the table cloth if you can , here we used stripped Christofle Talisman given to us by my Mom as a wedding gift

Votive Tea Light Holders used as Flower Vases

Step 4: If you should have any votives around the house take the candle out and use it as a small flower vase scattered on the table helping the table come alive with living breathing objects and pick a color of flower that is in the china pattern

 

Dragon Vase by l'Objet

Step 5: Walk around your home and pick up stuff and place it on the table giving it height and dimension, here I I chose a dragon vase from our living room and orchids from our balcony and placed them on the table for dramatic affect and then at the time of sitting down to eat I removed them

 

Stand back and enjoy the art piece you created !

Always remember that the common denominator in style or fashion is YOU. We all consistently gravitate to the same colours or patterns in our home its the way we mix and match everything making it come alive and have its own renaissance.  

Have a great weekend,

Michou