innovative centrepieces

The “Facing Center” iPad centerpieces from Keep Interacting allow organizers to incorporate photos and other information into an event’s table decor. Launched earlier this year, the iPads display a slideshow of photos, product images, sponsor information, or other content provided by the event’s host ahead of time. Then, at the event, the company provides a photographer to take photos that are instantly added to the display. Using the touch screens, guests can also share the images on social media, send them via email, and order printed copies to pick up from a kiosk on site.

At a 50th anniversary party for Dior Nails, 2013 BizBash Innovator Garin Baura created a performance-art-style centerpiece inspired by artist Holten Rower’s layered, colorful poured paintings: As various courses came out, staffers also served platters of brightly hued flowers which were scattered onto the all-white table. “People were taking flowers and throwing them around—it loosened things up and made the dinner experience more playful,” Baura said.

The 13th annual Friends of the High Line benefit, held at New York’s Pier 57 in May, centered on photographs of the High Line taken through the years. In lieu of the event’s usual foliage-heavy centerpieces, printed photographs were scattered atop raised Lucite platforms, which were eventually also used to hold the night's family-style dinner platters.

In Miami, the dinner tables at a Star Trek-theme vintner dinner—one of 17 celebrity chef-helmed events at private homes held as part of the 13th annual Naples Winter Wine Festival in January—offered centerpieces with iPads embedded on the sides that displayed the evening’s menu, updating as each course was served.

At the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum's Butterfly Ball in Chicago in May, the gala had a farm-like atmosphere. Tables were decked with miniature gardens potted with tomatoes, colorful peppers, asparagus, and kale; around the centerpieces, fairy lights in miniature Mason jars added to the elegant yard-party vibe.

At the 125th anniversary gala for the National Geographic Society in June, the “Land, Sea, and Sky” theme inspired an array of custom tables and toppers, including glacier ice sculptures. Select Lucite tables were not topped with any decorations, but instead held water and plant life, or natural objects like seashells.

Instead of centerpieces, David Stark Design created lazy Susans rimmed in white LED lights that made sharing the antipasto easier at New York’s Robin Hood Foundation benefit in May.

Fifteen fashion and interior designers each designed their own table at the Partnership With Children’s Gala in April. Interior design firm Paul and Martha L.L.C. created an attention-grabbing tabletop by using a $90,000 sculpture of pink roses as a centerpiece. Created by artist Will Ryman, the oversize flowers were made of materials including plaster, paint, and aluminum mesh.

The Starlight Children's Foundation hosted its Starlight Gala, sponsored by Toys "R" Us, at Toronto's Fairmont Royal York Hotel in April. The event’s circus-inspired ideas included dinner tables topped with miniature Ferris wheels that held cupcakes with colorful frosting.

Centerpieces were appropriately made of glowing, vintage photo slides at the Art Institute of Chicago’s Snap Gala in October, which benefitted the Photography Gala Fund.

Centerpieces at the Whitney Museum of American Art gala, held in October, encouraged playful interaction, featuring silver paint cans holding breadsticks and also Sharpie markers that guests could use to draw on the canvas tablecloths.

In March, guests at the California Science Center’s Discovery Ball dined under the wings of NASA’s retired Endeavour space shuttle. In keeping with the space exploration theme, illuminated tables were topped with celestial decor elements like mini solar systems in glass bowls.

Russell Simmons’s Art for Life benefit, held in the Hamptons in July, featured an idyllic theme—“Field of Dreams”—that came to life in the whimsical centerpieces. Floating kites suspended over each table and anchored to wheatgrass flats had colorful signs on their tails that held the names of artistic vocations such as “dancer” and “poet.”

Held in April, the Catalina Island Conservancy Ball’s campfire theme was reflected in the decor, which included centerpieces of illuminated apothecary jars filled with the makings of a classic campsite snack: s’mores.

For the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center’s gala, held in Miami in December, Shiraz Events designed miniature terrariums in fishbowls, that were placed on highboy tables during cocktail hour.

The Mint Agency used sand, shells, and bowls holding live fish as centerpieces at the September premiere dinner for Spring Breakers during the Toronto International Film Festival.

For the Clean the World gala, held at the Peabody Orlando in 2011, Special Event Floral filled fishbowls with blue marbles, then added battery-operated lights. The Peabody Orlando's duck soap appeared to float on top of each centerpiece.

David Monn decorated the Park Avenue Armory in New York for the 2012 holiday season. Monn used candles housed inside glass fishbowls to line the baseboards inside the ornate space.

Held on March 9, the Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science’s annual Galaxy Gala had an aquatic theme inspired by the museum’s new facility now under construction, which includes a 500,000-gallon aquarium. Produced by Jose Dans and held at the JW Marriott Marquis, the various centerpiece designs by Wow Factor included stacked fishbowls filled with sand, lichen, pincushion proteas, and red branches.

Dinner at the California Science Center’s Discovery Ball, held in Los Angeles in March, took place underneath the wings of the Endeavour space shuttle. Reflecting the space theme, illuminated tables were topped with mini solar systems and tropical flowers in glass bowls.

At the 2009 awards reception for Commercial Real Estate Women, a national association representing women in the industry, fishbowls holding live goldfish were embedded into the bars, adding to the evening's aquatic theme.

For New York Design Center's table at Diffa’s Dining by Design in New York in 2011, Coffinier Ku Design folded red napkins into flower shapes and topped each one with a flower- and water-filled glass bowl.

At Diffa’s Dining by Design in Chicago in 2011, Erg International’s table, designed by Weetu, was topped with filmstrip-filled glass bowls.