Customer Reviews

Set with Style: Perfect Tables from the Dining Room to the Kitchen

5 star:		(0)
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3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(2)

 

 

I am baffled by why this book was ever published. The settings are actually dull and uninspired. In my opinion, the photos were not styled well: unironed tableclothes, a string hanging, a crooked plate (Herend's Rothschild Bird pattern), so many napkins on the right side of the dinner plate, knife blades facing away from the plate.

Perhaps the author is trying to break with the above traditions and etiquette. I don't know. There are many better books out there--most of them.

This book should be a collector's item - a book about table settings in which the photos consistently display incorrect settings! This author cranks out books by the score, but apparently no one ever properly edits them. In many of the photos, the desert silver is placed incorrectly (although the text does get it right). Also, as another reviewer pointed out, in several photos the napkin was oddly placed to the right of the plate under the knives. The photo stylist can't set a table and didn't read the text. Where was the author? The editor? Skip this book, unless you'd like to present it to someone as a joke.

I agree with the two prior reviewers that this isn't the best book to purchase if you're looking for new, innovative table settings. And, they are also correct to note that some of the settings featured "improperly" set tables (e.g., knife blades facing the wrong direction). The value that I found in this book was that it lead me on an imagination journey. The table settings in the book are not ones that I would replicate--the styles are not very contemporary and some of them are a bit old fashioned for my taste--but, I did see the vision behind many of the settings. When I look at books such as these, I enjoy feeling out the concepts even when the execution is poor. If the book has both terrible concepts and also terrible execution, then I feel very disappointed. After reading this book, I thought about the ways that I could make the table settings better and a bit more innovative. At the end of the day, I can't say that I'd recommend the book for viable information and ideas about table settings, but at the same time it wasn't a total loss for me.