This post may contain affiliate links — at no additional cost to you. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Every piece here meets the same standard: timeless, coastal, worth keeping. See our full Disclosure for details.
Some summers you set a table. This one, we carried the table out to the trees years ago and never really brought it back.
My husband built it during that strange, quiet spring of 2020 — ten feet long and broad enough that no one eats with their arms pinned in — and though it lives in a clearing behind the house, under a string of cafe lights we hung and never took down, it travels all over the property with us: the gravel drive, the front lawn out by the ferns, the edge of the woods, wherever the day calls for. In July, though, it’s home in the glade. The stone steps down to it we set by hand, the two of us. The fire pit at the edge of the clearing I built with my son, one heavy rock at a time. None of it is precious. All of it is ours. And on a July evening, when the light goes long and gold through the leaves, it is the only place I want to eat.
None of it is precious. All of it is ours.
Once or twice a summer, when it’s worth the effort, we put on a lobster boil.
The boil
A summer boil isn’t a recipe so much as a pile. Some nights it’s lobster, some nights it’s a few dozen littleneck clams, and some nights it’s both. Whatever the shellfish, the rest stays the same: Yukon Gold potatoes, onions, and corn go in the pot, and because this is Rhode Island, so do links of Portuguese chouriço, smoky and red, that flavor the whole thing. It comes out steaming into a couple of white enamelware trays with a navy rim, a piece or two of old blue-and-white splatterware, and a big enamel basin set down the center, with a torn loaf of Portuguese bread — in an old wooden bowl lined with a striped linen napkin — for sopping, and little bowls of melted butter within everyone’s reach. You eat it with your hands. You’ll want a good set of crackers and picks for the lobster, because it is going to get messy, and that’s the whole point.
Shop the boil: Enamel serving trays | Blue & white splatterware | Enamel basin | Lobster crackers & picks | Bread-bowl linen napkins
And for after, nothing that needs an oven — just cold watermelon cut in wedges, drizzled with a mojito white balsamic I bring home from a little shop in Wickford, and sprinkled with fresh mint from the big pot by my back door. The mint and lime against the sweet is the whole of summer in one bite.
The setting
I keep the places blue and white and simple, because the food is loud enough on its own. Each setting gets a navy gingham linen placemat, one of the white enamel platters with a navy rim — roomy enough to wrangle a whole lobster — a set of navy-handled flatware, and a folded striped dish towel for a napkin, sturdier than a good linen one and I don’t mind butter on them. The chairs are simple bronze metal bistro chairs; I keep them clustered at one end and let the rest of the table run open for the food. On a table this long, and this weathered, bare wood is the best cloth there is.
Shop the setting: Gingham placemats | Enamel plates | Navy flatware | Striped dish-towel napkins | Bistro chairs
The flowers
No arrangement, nothing from a florist — just daisies, a handful dropped into each of a row of pint mason jars set down the length of the table. Daisies are honest flowers; they don’t try, and they suit a table like this one. If your garden’s between blooms, the hydrangeas are usually going strong by July too — here’s how I arrange those.
Daisies are honest flowers; they don’t try.
Shop the flowers: Pint mason jars
The drinks
The drinks live in the same galvanized tub I was conditioning flowers in a week ago — it does every job out here — packed with ice and glass bottles of Coke and cold bottles of Sam Adams Summer Ale. For anything poured, a glass drink dispenser of lemonade with a little sea salt and a stack of Oneida stackable glasses. They’re not so precious you’d think twice about carrying them out to the grass, but there’s a clean, simple elegance to them — the kind of glass that disappears into a setting and still adds a little shine, dressing the table without ever asking for attention.
Shop the drinks: Galvanized tub | Drink dispenser | Stackable glasses
The light
The whole evening is timed to the light. We eat as the sun drops, and by the time the shells are a wreck and the butter’s gone, the cafe lights have come on overhead, a row of little glass votives flickering down the length of the table, and the fire pit is going at the edge of the clearing. There’s a second little work table out there for s’mores, when someone wants them. Nobody’s in a hurry to carry anything in.
That’s the whole of it — ours, anyway. Built by hand, set in the trees, and easy enough that the person who made it gets to sit down too. If you’d like the quieter, indoor version, here’s the June table we set earlier this summer.
Shop the light: Bistro string lights | Glass votive holders | Votive candles
The Sources
Everything on the table, in one place:
- White enamelware serving trays (navy rim)
- White enamel oval plates (navy rim — the place plates)
- White enamelware basin (blue rim, 8 qt)
- Blue & white splatterware roaster — similar
- Lobster / seafood crackers & picks set
- Striped dish towels (the place-setting napkins)
- Navy gingham linen placemats
- Navy-handled flatware
- Striped linen napkins (line the bread bowl)
- Bronze metal bistro chairs
- Pint mason jars (for the daisies)
- Galvanized tub (ice & drinks)
- Glass drink dispenser
- Oneida stackable glasses
- Outdoor bistro string lights
- Glass votive holders
- Votive candles (refills)
Get the sources for every table and gathering — no digging.
