When I do entertain, in the summer, which is rare, I receive my guests on the front porch, set up wicker trays found at Pottery Barn, and serve iced beverages. Anytime I do welcome friends, it's always a tray of canapes or Planters peanuts, jellied candy from Paris, and a good bottle of Sancerre.
An orchestra can add some class, a historical vibe, but I believe you can get the same emotion from pottery wheels.
In Old Europe and Ancient Crete, women were respected for their roles in the discovery of agriculture and for inventing the arts of weaving and pottery making.
I discovered that bone china was a British invention, which had been developed by a pottery sited next to a slaughterhouse - 'bone' china, of course, contains bones, though we are inclined to forget that.
On the Italian side, we can trace the family back 2,000 years. I have a cousin in Rome, a famous archaeologist, Count Andrea Carandini, who was in Lombardy and came across some pottery with the original name of the family, Carandinus, painted on it.
For the longest time I was afraid I'd have to keep on working at the factories. There was a steel mill and a pottery; if you didn't go to college, you went to work in those places.
I don't like the idea of things being off-limits to kids - like a fancy sitting room where they can't touch anything. I own vintage pottery cups, and I let my girls hold them. It teaches them to treat objects with respect.