You can’t blame global warming for the mixture of spring, summer, autumn, and winter inside Guastavino’s last Tuesday, April 17. Thirty-three designers interpreted the four seasons, this year’s theme for the Horticultural Society of New York’s Flowers & Design fund-raiser. While some tables referred to only one part of the year, others married aspects of all four.Utilizing color, patterns, and seasonally indicative plants (as well as a sense of vitality), designers not only created pretty settings but also presented an assortment of useful ideas for centerpieces, place cards, chairs, and napkins. Maureen Ferry, the society’s director of special events, oversaw the event and worked with design chair Chris Giftos (the former events chief of the Metropolitan Museum of Art), who supervised the designs. The night’s honorees included Giftos, lauded for his 40-plus years of work, as well as interior designers Tony Ingrao and Randy Kemper and benefactors Harvey and Constance Krueger. While gazing upon the various designs, guests dined on Guastavino's menu of grilled vegetable terrine with pesto and goat cheese, followed by herb-crusted rack of lamb served with a truffle mascarpone polenta cake. The event grossed $350,000 for the organization.
—Mark Mavrigian
Posted 04.25.07
Photos: Marina Fragoso Senra for BizBash
—Mark Mavrigian
Posted 04.25.07
Photos: Marina Fragoso Senra for BizBash
Verde Custom Flowers’ playful summer setting—a field of wheatgrass dotted with artist Leon Joosen’s paper butterflies—contrasted with the sleek feel of the table’s black furniture.
Susan Edgar’s wholly original centerpiece was a large revolving tower with seasonal flowers on each of its four faces. Surrounding the spire, diners got their own individual tables: fabric-covered platforms placed over enormous ceramic planters. Each seasonally hued table had crisscrossed garden gloves as a place mat.
A fanciful leaf-covered umbrella dominated the summery table by Studio Sweet Pea. Little lanterns hung over the table from the leafy structure, and the backs of chairs got special treatment, too: foliage-patterned beach towels.
Flora New York creatively rolled napkins around stalks of bamboo at each place setting. (A single calla lily stem also dotted the back of each guest’s chair.)
Renny & Reed’s year-round environment included tall branches of spring dogwood that rose from each corner, summer grass, and fall shades of brown and gold in the intersecting table runners on a raw cedar table, a nod to winter.
DeJuan Stroud played with color and pattern, using solid acid green on the table and alternating napkins in black-and-white houndstooth and citrus-colored polka dots. A lamp with a cubelike filigreed flower-motif shade rose out of the center of the setting.
LMD Floral Events Interiors lined the banquet table with unique botanic specimens like black sea fans and branches covered in lichen and used a mirrored top to create an aquariumlike, watery effect.
L’Olivier cleverly used typically spring flowers—yellow tulips—in different stages of growth to represent all four seasons. Enclosed within each napkin was a single unopened flower (bulb and all) to represent early spring.
Prudence Designs turned its table into a color-by-numbers piece. Individual watercolor sets sat at each place setting (holding name cards) so guests could paint their choice of season on the white canvas of the tabletop and chair coverings.
Author Abbie Zabar created a harvest table with bronze casts of farmer Amy Goldman’s heirloom pumpkins, gourds, and squash. Doubling as placecards, Zabar’s calligraphed dinner menus topped each guest’s place setting.
