It’s not just ‘knives and forks and Emily Post rules.’ Welcome to the world of competitive table-setting

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This article was published 28/04/2021 (1950 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In the beginning, there was sourdough.

Then came the puzzles, the backyard birding, the pickling and, of course, the fermented hot sauce. If you’ve cycled through all of these and are looking for a new pandemic hobby, well, we might just have something for you, namely “tablescaping”: the fine art of setting the table.

Crafting a beautiful table according to an occasion-inspired theme isn’t just for decorative gourd season anymore. Possibly because people are in deep restaurant withdrawal, Instagram and Pinterest are increasingly populated with napkin-folding techniques, centrepieces and other activities that were once the sole province of banquet captains.

Well, maybe not the sole province, it turns out. As “SET!,” a documentary film screening at Toronto’s Hot Docs Festival this week demonstrates, there’s a small subculture of competitive table-setters who’ve been keeping this tradition alive at county fairs for decades. “SET!” follows these trend-setting tablescapers for months as they prepare for exhibition at the 2019 table-setting competition at California’s Orange County Fair.

“Competitive table-setting isn’t just knives and forks and Emily Post rules about the plate being one inch from the edge of the table and all that,” says Scott Gawlik, director of “SET!,” which is having its world premiere here this week. “Although that’s a very important aspect, there’s also this major creative component, because all of the competitors in the contest have chosen a theme, and they have to build a setting and let their table tell a story within that theme.”

In case you were wondering, this activity significantly predates social media, Martha Stewart and even the Good Housekeeping gurus of the domestic-focused postwar era. And it’s not just a California thing, either. Competitive table-setting was a popular feature on Women’s Day at the Canadian National Exhibition, dating back at least to the 1940s. In 1965, the Toronto Daily Star ran a photo of a 19-year-old lighting a candle as a final touch on her yellow-and-bronze “Golden Wedding theme” entry, one of six tables at the competition that year.

Although weddings and romance were the most common themes in the CNE’s 1965 contest, more contemporary themes at recent California fairs have included “Boho,” “Comic Books,” “the 1920s” and “International Travel,” a theme chosen by several of the contestants in “Set!” Within that theme, one took it quite literally and staged international foods, another took its viewers to Italy and another was inspired by the Dr. Seuss book “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!”

But the real drama and intrigue started to unfold when it became clear that two tablescapers had narrowed it down to “Africa” and, beyond that, to an “African Safari.” Director Gawlik says that this was when he started to realize just how much controversy there could be in the world of competitive tablescaping.

“One is kind of a fun African safari, but it has expensive glassware and settings and is really elegant,” says Gawlik. “But another contestant decided to use this as a forum to talk about the serious issue of poaching in Africa, so there’s blood on her table and taxidermied animals, and it’s sort of like the wild animals have taken revenge on the poachers who went to have dinner.”

Those who know Hilarie Moore, the auteur of the blood-bones-and-taxidermy protest installation, aren’t surprised, given that she’s known for her statement pieces on the table-setting circuit. One year, she built a tableau that was an homage to New Year’s Eve that included freeze-dried mice drinking champagne. Another time, her table was a platform for raising awareness on how plastics are strangling marine life with a “sandcastle of trash” (as one of the other contestants put it) on her “Castaway Café” installation.

“And all the fancy ladies in Orange County are up in arms with this,” says Gawlik. “I mean, they’re like, ‘How dare you, this is supposed to be a dinner table.’ But she’s looking at her art differently and wanting to create a dialogue and start a conversation as opposed to just offering up a nice place to have a meal.”

Table-setting is always about more than the meal, though, right? It’s about setting the mood, making the guests feel welcome, sparking the conversation and telling a story about what the occasion means to the host. To the competitive tablescapers, it’s also about having the courage to take a craft that’s generally only shared with friends and family and showing it off to the public, where they’ll be judged (sometimes harshly). And the lovely thing about this compassionate film is that it communicates all of these complexities.

“I learned through the making of this movie that setting the table means a lot of different things to a lot of different people,” says Gawlik. “Sure, there are some laughs, but there’s definitely much deeper scenes about the purpose of life and art as well as the meaning of art and how you find it.”

He continues: “I think this movie is more of a human-interest story. You can literally take out the table-setting aspect of it and it can be applied to anything. It’s about passionate people giving it their all and there’s a lot of drama and laughs and tears.

“Just like with anything in life.”

“SET!” is available April 29 at 10 a.m. See boxoffice.hotdocs.ca for tickets. The Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival runs April 29 to May 9.

Christine Sismondo is a Toronto-based writer and contributor to the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @sismondo