Peacock-themed tablescape with dinnerware from 222-Fifth

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Friends, it’s here! The Eight Hundredth (800th!!) week of Tablescape Thursday over at Susan’s amazing blog, Between Naps on the Porch. You have no idea how much I have loved this weekly feature of hers – going on now for more than 15 years! I first discovered it with the 100th installment, in 2010. She doesn’t know it, but with that post Susan was literally responsible for me discovering the art and fun of tablescaping. I had been collecting random dishes for a period of time, and enjoyed mixing and matching pieces, but it wasn’t until I started visiting Tablescape Thursday week after week that I finally understood how you could express so much creativity through table settings! This has lead me to a much larger collection of dinnerware and tablescaping accoutrements than I ever imagined myself having, to the creation of the Facebook group I started called Thrifty Tablescapers that now has almost 7,000 members (and accompanying Instagram account), and of course to my own full-blown obsession with the art and fun of setting pretty tables! I specifically set out to create an elegant but fun and colorful table to share for the 800th installment of my all-time favorite blog link party – and to do that I started with a set of dishes that I appreciate so much because of where they came from. Read on, but please do hop over to the 800th Tablescape Thursday for so much more tablescaping inspiration!

I have a really sweet friend (we were college roommates!) who knows how much I love tablescaping. She also knows I love peacocks especially in art, and that I have a large peacock tattoo. So one day she was thrifting, and she found the most amazing set of dishes – dinner and salad plates in this gorgeous peacock pattern by 222-Fifth.

Did she call me to come and get them? No! Ask the manager to set them aside for me? Again, no!

Instead, she bought them and gave them to me for Christmas!

Originally I was going to try to do an over-the-top, gold sequined spectacular theme for this table, but the more I played around with these beautiful plates the more I just gravitated toward something a little more refined, a little toned down. So let’s take a tour around my brushed gold, elegant peacock table!

The tablecloth was a challenge – I wanted to use the gorgeous textured runner (a charity shop find) with all that incredible fringe – but I felt like even the runner needed “grounding.” I tested a few candidates, and settled on my thrifted gold damask cloth. Appropriately wintery, because weather-wise we were in the deep-freeze at this point.

The place settings featured the dinner plate – I will have to do another table featuring the salad plates at another time – set upon a brushed gold charger. These were from Dollar Tree. For the salad plates I used a simple white plate with gold rim, also thrifted. I off-set these to the right so guests would immediately see more of the peacock design on the dinner plates.

Napkins had to be the aqua beauties I had recently found at my local Stuff, Etc. consignment store, and the thrifted napkin rings were jeweled and beaded in shiny brown, amber, and gold tones.

Flatware is my heirloom “Flair” by 1847 Rogers Brothers, handed down from my grandmother. And glassware is the stunning “Bahia” tumbler by Rocco. These are pure artistry to me and were a steal at Goodwill several years ago at $2.99 each!

For the centerpiece, I rounded up a few items from my peacock collection to carry through on the theme. The candleabra is a recent Goodwill find.

The metal peacock was a gift from my daughter, and the little sparkly brooch was a gift from the same friend who gave me the dinnerware!

The next piece may seem out of sorts – it’s just a ceramic head, after all. But hear me out! When I worked at a small antique mall several years ago, one of the vendors was a man who was trying to sell some of the smaller pieces from his deceased mother’s collection of highly artistic home decor. She had wonderful taste, though not really in keeping with the vintage vibe of the little mall. Her son had put several pieces from her peacock collection in the booth, including this one. I couldn’t afford anything else in the booth, but I wanted to support this particular customer so I bought this lovely piece even though it appeared to be the lid off something else. I had it for a few years before I finally figured out that it is indeed the lid from a trinket box in the Edie Rose Peacock Collection by Rachel Bilson.

Here is the salt and pepper set for the table – vintage, from a large collection of S&P sets that Greg and I bought to re-sell. I kept this one pair.

Here are a few more views around the table.

Here’s the birdseye view:

And a few shots using the magic of candlelight – I just always oooh-and-ahhh over the soft shimmer that candlelight bestows on a dinner table!

And a final view from one of my favorite angles:

And here is the put-away shot, with everything gathered up and looking beautiful before it goes back into the cupboards:

Finally, here’s a Pinnable image in case you’d like to save the Peacock Table for future ideas!

Thanks for looking, and don’t forget to visit Tablescape Thursday for more inspiration!

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