Laying a table well is one of the best ways to make guests feel relaxed and cosy. Queen of tablescaping Laura Jackson’s advice? Forget the stiff old rules and have fun with it
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feast is not just about food. Just to sit at a table surrounded by the faces of your people: nothing beats it. A feast is about togetherness, whether there are two people at the table, or 16. The primal joy of good food taps into something even more fundamental than hunger; if food is a love language, a feast is a big hug.
Is it sacrilege to say that being a host matters more than being a cook? Not to disparage the skill of the chef. Quite the opposite, it takes skill to make really good gravy, concentration to remember to take the cake out of the oven before it burns, and years of experience to time a roast to come together at the right moment. It takes no skill to fold a napkin and light a candle, yet with a beautifully laid and bounteously laden table, the night feels special before dinner is served, which takes the pressure off.
Forget about matching dinner services and solemn soldiers of cutlery; this is not about whether you inherited a soup tureen or which way the blade of a knife should point. The old-fashioned rules of laying the table have made way for the modern art of tablescaping, where mixing trumps matching, and the point is to make sure everyone is having fun, not to catch anyone out for not knowing which is their side plate. Hurrah for that. Snobbery always was terrible taste.
