Tableware

Marie and Christel Schoenfelder looked down the rows of tabletops with a mix of anxiety and anticipation. Many thousands of dollars of silk, china, crystal and silver were spread out before them. Months of planning, shopping, cleaning and crafting were about to climax under the horse-racing concourse at the Los Angeles County Fair. The mother-daughter duo from Rancho Cucamonga are two of the reigning queens of one of the most esoteric competitions at the fair: who can set the best dinner table.

Shig Kariya, 84, a Japanese American businessman who was interned during World War II and later helped co-found the Mikasa Inc. tableware company, died Friday in Silver Spring, Md., of pneumonia. Kariya was born in Japan to parents who had immigrated to California in 1913 but traveled to Japan frequently on business. He lived in the United States from the age of 4 and in 1934 earned a business degree from Los Angeles City College.

The 1930s Art Deco influences china and tableware. The introduction of sleek, streamlined dishes from Fiesta and Russell Wright departs from the elaborate Georgian and Renaissance styles of the 19th century and signals the beginning of modernism. This pottery blends form and function, is easy to maintain and is mass marketed for a country mired in the Depression. Still, it is so avant-garde it won't gain a solid following until the '40s and '50s.

Kikuhei Sakatsume and his wife, Mitsui, have spent the last 40 years putting the finishing touches on stainless steel tableware. The other day, they were at work in the wooden shack behind their house. Seated at opposite sides of an electric motor, they pressed the knives, one by one, against the grinding wheels. "I do the blades and my wife does the handles," Sakatsume, 65, told a visitor. "But if our income declines much more, we'll close the shop and live off our pensions."

THE pale green lamp on the shelves at West Elm in Santa Monica is made of common clay but looks as if it's carved, polished jade. At Kartell in West Hollywood, Dutch designer Marcel Wanders' plastic Stone stools sparkle like chunks of topaz and citrine. Across the street, Fendi Casa's Crystal chair looks like a cushion-cut diamond. These days, a residence described as a jewel box may actually look like one.

There it is, way at the back of the cupboard. What is that thing? We see it only when we're hauling out all the special-occasion tableware for the holidays. We've already got the carving set out, and the gravy boat and ladle. The sugar tongs, olive forks and butter picks are scattered around us. Along with that dish over there, which is for cranberry jelly -- or anyway, we think it is.

Time was, the traditional American bride chose a husband, a honeymoon site, a church, a china pattern and a silver pattern, sometimes in reverse order. Then came "the era of the flower children," says George Holmes, editor of Jewelers' Circular-Keystone, a trade magazine, "and formal dining went out"-- along with the other stuff. Even with today's return to such traditions, silver--one of America's oldest crafts--may not make the lineup.

CONSIDER this humble sugar shaker, a staple of kitchens and coffee shops across the land. About 35 million have been sold -- maybe double that if you include all the knockoffs -- and not one of them labeled a work of art. Yet that's exactly what they are, says design historian Bill Stern, a connoisseur of ubiquitous and unsung objects. "This decanter is iconic," he says, "the very essence of modernism, a perfect meld of function and form."

For generations, the French upper classes made leisurely weekend lunches in the gardens of their country homes a hallmark of the "art of living well. " On languid afternoons, they arrayed long outdoor tables with platters and tart molds imprinted with family monograms and crests; dessert arrived on trays splashed with vivid portraits of animals, and coffee came in pots decorated with fruits and flowers. And for the best families, only the glazed earthenware made in a factory in this town on the banks of the Loire River would do. The crockery, known as faience, was as much a discreet symbol of prestige and good taste in an aristocratic family as having "de" before a last name or a signet ring with the family crest passed down to a son when he turned 18. But for the last few decades, the faience of Gien has also become a symbol of a lifestyle that is a vanishing art. Modern life just doesn't call for a dinner service that comes with 14 matching platters and covered tureens for soup, vegetables and sauces.

Lead-poisoning of a 4-year-old Santa Ana girl has prompted an import embargo on a Mexican-made brand of tamale steamer. The Eagle Brand steamers sold in Southern California have been found to contain unsafe amounts of lead, according to Orange County public health officials. The steamers are bucket-shaped, about 14 inches tall and one foot in diameter at the base, county officials said. They are described as having rough, poorly soldered seams. The U.S.