Room for Change: Table Manners

My mother called it “family time” and it was non-negotiable. It involved my father, brother, mother, and me sitting down each evening and eating together around the table my mom had picked up for $25 at a garage sale and painted olive green (what can I say, the official color of the 70s was olive green). The food itself was unspectacular (again, let’s blame the 70s). But though, at the time, my brother and I muttered and rolled our eyes, as an adult I am deeply committed to the idea of gathering, of breaking bread together, of nourishment of body and soul around a communal table. 

I hear, however, that the dining table — indeed dining together — is out of favor. Just one in three families sits down to eat together, says family therapist Anne Fishel, executive director of the nonprofit Family Dinner Project. “In the fight to idealize our homes, dining rooms have been a devastating casualty,” reports Southern Living Magazine, concluding that, “Before our very eyes, dining rooms have disappeared.” My friend, a realtor, concurs, noting that her clients prioritize kitchen islands over dining rooms, a culture shift that developers seem happy to oblige. 

Not so fast, say I, a stalwart member of the dining table resistance. I have long insisted on “family time” in my own home, enduring the eye-rolls of my own teens, while their friends embraced our communal dinners with sociological curiosity.

And I have long celebrated the dining table — one that is the site of day-to-day meals, of occasions happy and sad and in between, that reaches beyond years and activities, that isn’t so precious that it can’t be used for constructing a science fair project or a gingerbread house, or supporting the occasional Zoom call. (Come to think of it, the desk at which I work was once a dining table — a lovely antique nabbed by my mom 50 years ago at a yard sale — that I’ve repurposed and refurbished, including turning a built-in cutlery drawer into a keyboard tray.)

To wit, the first purchase my husband and I made two years ago to furnish our Island home was, you guessed it, a dining table — specifically a large rectangular table made of reclaimed wood with an expandable (hidden) leaf. For seating, we purchased one bench (same company, same reclaimed wood) and eight wicker dining chairs, bought second-hand. We demand much of our dining table — including that it comprises sustainability.

Hand-made from domestic hardwood

Collins Heavener lives (and farms) with his family on Chappaquiddick and handmakes gorgeous dining tables for Island folks, a process he finds “incredibly gratifying,” he says. “The dining table gets a ton of mileage through all the life experiences. I want a dining table to be used.” 

He starts by consulting with the designer or homeowner and often takes a field trip to the home to get a sense of the space where the table will reside. He also wants to know how the table will be used, he says, “like ‘when you picture a full dinner how many people do you want to seat? How do you want them seated? Is this family style or intimate?”

Collins also celebrates the relationship that dining tables have to food. “I love the idea that I built the dining table and then they’re also eating lamb or chicken or vegetables that I’ve raised and grown here on Island on that table.”

When it comes to choosing the wood, he’s partial to domestic woods. “Part of that is only wanting to work with what you can find in our backyard more or less in New England,” he says. “I don’t want anything that’s taken a long trip overseas.” He recently built a table from a beloved cherry tree that had to come down in the front yard of the client’s home. Collins’s particular favorite is black walnut — “so exceptional to work with,” he says, “and so diverse in character. In terms of colors, it’s purple and chocolate, it’s gray, it’s red and no two trees are similar.” 

When he delivers his tables, he says that people often comment that it’s too nice to use. “I say, ‘absolutely trash it, make it yours,’” he replies. He points to his own table, which bears the marks of his son’s Hot Wheels … “so many of life’s experiences happen around the dining table. I feel honored to be able to build that piece for whoever’s looking for it.” 

Secondhand but first-rate

I am the reigning queen of secondhand shopping and easily more than half of our Island home is furnished with cast-off goods. (I’m fully anticipating the day when a guest notices he’s walking on his own discarded wool rug or sitting on his former sofa.) The good news about the death of dining rooms is that there’s a lot of orphaned furniture out there. According to Architectural Digest, “Most of the furniture currently cluttering dumps was made within the last 10 to 15 years.” Which means that the good stuff — built to last — is up for grabs. 

Bluedot’s Marketing Editor, Elizabeth Weinstein, who lives in midtown Manhattan, spent months scanning online sites  — she and her husband love to cook and host and wanted a vintage table “with a little gravitas.” Finally, she says, she spotted the one — a solid cherry table that seated anywhere from six to twenty people. The table had apparently been in the Danish mission to the United Nations (not far from Elizabeth’s midtown apartment), which … who cares if that’s even true? That’s an origin story to share over a meal with guests! 

These days, Elizabeth is happily hosting, including her dad’s 80th party, which featured 18 guests. “We have nine extra leaves and 18 extra legs squirreled around our apartment,” she says. “We think we only need nine of the legs, but we’re afraid to get rid of the extras!” She calls it “the table of my dreams.”

I bought a cream-colored pedestal table (and four Eames-ish chairs) at Chicken Alley and the price tag — less than $150 all in — was definitely dreamy to me. 

Reclaiming the past 

Sophia Warren, COO and Creative Director at Vineyard Decorators, has clients who value sustainability and she makes a point of ensuring that her product line supports that. “We have a few dining tables that we keep in stock that are sorted from different reclaimed woods,” she says. “One of the things that I love about them is that they all have this distressing on the finish. As they get more use over time, they just become more beautiful.” Vineyard Decorators also works with a couple of companies that custom-make tables from domestic hardwoods using U.S.-based millworkers. 

But it isn’t just the materials themselves that contribute to an item’s sustainability, Sophia points out. “Another aspect is keeping something for a really long time over years of use,” she says. “Dining on it and getting its own strips and nips and grooves and marks and just life on the table is another way to look at sustainability.”

Among the many things I love about Martha’s Vineyard, perhaps my favorite is the ubiquity of dinner parties. I have sat around many new neighbors’ tables — and they have joined me at mine. Some of those tables have hosted presidents and movie stars and novelists and shipbuilders and farmers and shop clerks and, well … our Island community. The tables bear the marks of lives lived, and meals and friendships savored. Dining tables are out of fashion? Certainly not here, and cheers to that. 

Where to find a table

Elizabeth Weinstein, Bluedot’s Marketplace Editor, is something of an online shopping sleuth, able to sniff out the best products at the best price. She suggests table-seekers check out Facebook Marketplace, local “stooping” accounts on social media (there’s NYC and Toronto — tell us if there’s one in your city!), Habitat for Humanity’s ReStores, or Elizabeth’s masterstroke 1stDibs. 

On the Vineyard, check out: 

• Act Two Second Hand Store, 66 Main Street, Vineyard Haven; acttwosecondhandstore.org
• Chicken Alley Thrift Shop, 38 Lagoon Pond Road, Vineyard Haven; chickenalley.org
• Second Treasures MV, 8 Uncas Avenue, Oak Bluffs; secondtreasuresmv.com
• The ‘Dumptique' at West Tisbury Transfer Station
• Pyewacket’s, 135 Anchor Way, Vineyard Haven
• MV Free Items and MV Stuff for Sale Facebook groups: Visit MV Free Items and MV Stuff for Sale (you’ll need to apply for membership)

(Have a dining table you want to donate? Chicken Alley and Second Act will pick it up for free!)

• To commission a table from Collins Heavener, email him at [email protected]; or find him on Instagram @marshallfarmwoodworks 
• Visit Vineyard Decorators at 35 Airport Road, Vineyard Haven.; vineyarddecorators.com

Wood for Good
Wood sometimes comes with tags noting a specific certification program. Eco-certifications run the gamut from third-party verified and trustworthy to industry-verified and less so to almost meaningless. Our own Dear Dot weighed in on certification programs for wood — primarily Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified and Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI). According to Dot’s research, “The FSC, or Forest Stewardship Council, certification was created following the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro by environmental activists while Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) was created by timber industry professionals in 1994 in response to FSC, which they viewed as a threat to industry. On their surface, both certifications look legit. But while FSC relies on a third-party verification system (this means that qualified outsiders are the ones determining whether requirements are met), SFI allows companies to self-assess. SFI is like relying on your teenager to tell you whether they completed their homework whereas FSC would call the teacher.”