Set! The Fascinating World of Competitive Tablescaping You Didn't Know You Needed

If you can scape a table, you can scape a fridge. Reporting back from a doc that has me contemplating a new craft | sport | art

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This weekend, I saw an amazing documentary and now it’s all I want to talk about. Let me set the scene, or table, for this. It’s called Set! and documents competitive tablescaping. Now, you may think this isn’t for you. You’d be wrong. It’s for everyone with two eyes and a heart. 

Set! elicited feelings in me not unlike watching the Olympics. The stakes couldn’t matter less to me personally, the details of the competition almost don’t matter, but the investment in the outcome feels so real because I care about the people. 

Set! presents some major players in the tablescaping game as they prepare for the Orange County Tablescaping competition. The competition, set at the county fair, invites competitors to choose from vague themes to create a “tablescape” according to very exacting standards. They are judged on creativity and table-setting etiquette. Bonnie Overman, a true vet and inspiration to other competitors, made her name by creating tables based around movie themes, for example. Her “Pirates of the Caribbean” table features three skulls she made herself alongside fancy plateware and glasses. People in this doc casually reveal they’ve spent upwards of $6000 on just the glassware for their tablescapes. I have SO MANY QUESTIONS as I sit here drinking from my “grab yourself a cup of ambition” mug from the Christmas Tree Shop (RIP). ¹People spare no expense in this scene. A mother/daughter team reveals they could not find a butter knife in gold to match their vision so the mom went to a foundry and had them create a gold butterknife for a competition. I can’t fathom these lives or choices, but I could have watched this for 24 hours straight! 

Bonnie Overman’s “Wicked” themed tablescape

Taking themes like “modern farmhouse” and “Oh, the places you’ll go!” (for an international travel theme submission), I loved seeing how creative these people (mostly women) were in creating a vision to match what they imagined in their heads. Husbands are left following unwritten directions to realize blueprints that only exist as figments in a woman’s mind. As it should be! One gay man, one of my favorites, is one we’re meant to root for as we learn he is without a job, has overcome tough times, and is trying to win the “best in show” ribbon. It’s amazing to see what this competition means to him even as he is reduced to living on food stamps and contemplating moving back in with his mom (who is very sweet but gets why he may not want that). Seeing what he comes up with on a dollar store budget was genuinely inspirational, and made me feel happy to see him feel such joy in finishing his entry.

My favorite TV show (and the favorite show of every fellow senior citizen I know), CBS Sunday Morning Show, did a feature on competitive table-scaping a few years ago. Queen Bonnie Overman is featured, and you can see what these artists come up with in a typical competition. 

 

This documentary shows how eclectic people can be in pursuit of interests that give their lives meaning, even and especially if no one else understands. I love that. There is a competitor featured in the doc called “the artist” who goes rogue every competition to use her tablescape to protest issues in society. She is truly NOT like the other girls. She also collects taxidermy and brings her two loves, taxidermy and protest, together in her tablescapes. Even without many fans among her fellow competitors, she persists in twisting an “international travel theme” into a protest of poaching in Africa (taxidermied animals included).

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I loved watching the fellow competitors (including a duo who lead an aquatic aerobics class) react with total shock and disgust at her vision. 

taxidermy is a bigger part of this than it should be!

It’s incredible to watch the chaos of the competitors rushing to make the most of their 2-hour setup window on competition day. Then, they leave the space and the two judges wander and judge anonymously using categories that would make the Miss America judges seem like NASA scientists. One judge wields a thesaurus so she can find more words that mean “nice.” They both struggle to mispronounce the name of a city at the core of a competitor’s tablescape, and that is the tell of what makes this all so great. We follow the competitors for months ahead of this day, through many concepts, build sessions, and truly more dollars than I could have guessed, and it all leads to judges who lack the words to describe what they’re seeing. In the end, they dole out first, second, and “best in show” ribbons according to point reductions and, seemingly, “vibes.” The results don’t seem to matter! Even though some are salty at their scores, it’s pretty evident that the joy is in the process of dreaming up their concept and making it happen. Watching this was yet another reminder to me of the times when “It’s the climb” enters my mind as a means of understanding moments when the process matters as much as the final product. The hold the Miley Cyrus songbook has on me will never cease to amaze me. 

By the way, did you know Sandra Lee originated the phrase “tablescape” in 2003? What hasn’t this woman contributed to society? Though table-setting competitions date to the 1930s/1940s, the idea of “scaping” a table, a patio, or even a fridge, seems to be becoming more prevalent. Watching this doc made me wonder why decoration or craft appears to be having a renaissance. As one competitor notes, table-scaping is the “whitest thing I do as a white person” which is certainly true. Privilege and whiteness can certainly afford some the luxury of making their things beautiful instead of simply useful (See every 40s and 50s newsreel on how to be a good housewife which was exclusively about how to do things like set tables properly while eliding that some didn’t have the time, money, or capacity to do this at all). But the man who says this is gay, poor, and a recovering addict. He is not the typical influencer I’d see on TikTok espousing the virtue of spending thousands to hide his fridge with false cabinet fronts to make it more aesthetically pleasing or decorating a cake to impress other parents at a child’s birthday party. Everyone in this documentary has found a niche craft they love and they pursue it without shame (or restraint) simply because it brings them joy. 

When the 1970s were causing social unrest due to *you name it* (Watergate, Vietnam, the decline of manufacturing jobs, the broader lack of trust in authority, etc. etc.) there were two major musical responses to the moment that seemed to capture popular feeling. One was punk, the other, disco. I love the thought that as the world felt like it was ending, disco became not just a lark but a vital part of life, a restorative moment in community to dance while the world (or the disco) burned. I can’t help but feel similarly watching this documentary. While democracy is in crisis and the world is a mess, I find myself asking, should I get into competitive tablescaping?² 

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Thanks for reading!

This is a free post for subscribers of Landline. Consider subscribing to the paid plan to get my weekly email of recommendations and links, a podcast episode, and more! You can also help me spread the word by sharing it with a friend who would love it. Thank you for being a friend!

1. Sample questions: What are the occupations of contestants that can fund this? Is this like F1 racing where it all feels like its run on money laundering?

2. My wife has already said no. However, watching this doc with me did almost win her over.