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With the porcelain and glassware presentation, Doriana and Massimiliano Fuksas have completed the “Colombina collection”, a table set that not only stands out for its aesthetic quality but offers a refined and ambitious innovation for current dining services practices with the historic and ritualistic evocations that I mentioned in the introduction and that I’d like to quickly explore here.
I’m referring to the two different serving methods called Service à la russe and Service à la française. Not everyone knows that the serving method that we use today is a direct derivative of the Service à la russe, introduced to Paris in the beginning of the 19th century by Prince Alexander Borissovitch Kourakin, ambassador of Czar Alexander I. This was a new serving method from his homeland and, thanks to its practicality, it soon became fashionable under the name Service à la russe. With this type of serving method (promoted by, among others, Urbain Dubois, the chef to Prince Orloff in Russia and subsequently to the King of Prussia and co-author of La cuisine classique: études pratiques, raisonnées et demonstratives de l’école francaise appliquée au service à la russe along with Emile Bernard in 1864), each serving was prepared in the kitchen and then brought to the table, the various dishes being served in succession, one after the other, just as we do today.
Before service à la russe was adopted, the service à la française was used, which was a serving method that had been used since the Middle Ages, where each course was made up of many different dishes that were all placed on the table together at the same time - rather like a modern buffet - leaving guests with the task of serving themselves. Starting in the second half of the 19th century, service à la française was cast aside since it was not as easy to use and more people were using the new Russian method both at home and in public.
So, at first glance, the “Colombina collection” is a lovely design, characterized by a sculptural approach: elegant, new, and pleasing plates, containers and cups made from different materials and in different colours. Actually, if we look closer, a knowledge of table rituals appears in the Fuksas design; a proposal that I see as quite close to a sort of resurgence of the service à la française. Certainly it is not a sterile and gratuitous historical resurgence but, on the contrary, a complete ‘set’ open to the evolution of being on the table at the same time with its gaming component, its attitude to change and change in the composition of the items on the table. One thing contains another, or they can easily be placed side by side like a welcoming pile of petals that can be leafed through one by one according to the guests’ preferences and, naturally, the dinner options: yes, I cannot help but see a modernization of the service à la française with this design.
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