Our Best in Show Winner for 2023 – Professional Category

For our Third Annual Etiquipedia International Place Setting Competition, Amy Willcock is again our Best in Show Winner for the Professional and Etiquette Community category. She won in this category in 2022.    

Her theme choice options for the 2023 contest were: A period 1953 place setting in honor of the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II; A 1930's nursery tea party place setting for young Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret; A mid-century modern, post-World War II tea place setting (for one or two); A complete place setting (for 2 or more) from any period in the life of King Charles III. She chose the 1930’s nursery tea party place setting for young Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret. We found her setting to be charming. Congratulations, Amy!   

Our Interview with Amy:

1. How did you choose the menu and various elements you used in your setting, and why? Please explain each of the utensils at your setting… For which of the foods on your menu (or course) was each different item intended?

My setting is for a children’s tea party – the children just happen to be princesses! It is set with 1930’s Bunnykins Royal Dalton china, the tea cups are slightly smaller than a regular sized tea cup being made for children, there is tea spoon in the saucer and the plate is an 8 inch/20 cm size. There is a bone handled tea knife ready for bread and butter with honey and cake and a spoon for jelly and ice cream. The jam pennies, a favourite of the young princesses, are eaten with the fingers. 

The tablecloth is an original 1930’s Disney table cloth made in Ireland. The honey pot is in the shape of a “skep” and wooden drizzler are sitting on a Peter Rabbit Wedgwood plate. There is a small silver teapot with a china tea strainer and a whimsical butter dish decorated with spaniels and a china milk jug by Gien decorated with circus performers. The small china hen is just for decoration.

We at Etiquipedia simply loved the vintage period details that make up this adorable table. The Bunnykins dishes with the “bone”, or celluloid handled knife and period flatware are the perfect accoutrements.

2. Why did you choose this particular period in time to set your table? Please go into as much detail as you can.

I chose this particular period as not much has changed since the 1930’s in aristocratic and upper class nursery’s, in fact all the same dishes are still great favourites today. All the china was used by my own children who are now grown up and I thought it was a great opportunity to use it. I still use the larger plates for birthday cakes as I love the running rabbits around the edge. 

3. Have you always enjoyed a properly set table? Or, if not, was the table setting something you learned to enjoy through your social life and/or business later on in life?

I grew up until the age of 12 in the United States, but my mother who was British insisted on setting a properly laid table and holding a knife and fork “properly” meaning in the English style, not cutting the food up and laying the knife on the edge of the plate and changing the fork into the right hand as they do in the USA…. and my Grandmother always had beautiful tables and insisted on cloth napkins all the time!

In my professional life as a food and lifestyle writer I have taught etiquette, historical and modern table settings for many years, and admit that I prefer simple tables now but have created many fun and elaborate tables over the years.

The menu: “Jam Pennies” were a tea time favorite of Queen Elizabeth II, as a child and throughout her life. They are small, round bread cutouts spread with butter and jam. 

4. Did you do any research on table setting etiquette before setting your elements at the table?

No, the only thing I knew I would include in the menu were the jam pennies as they were a favourite of the Princesses.

5. Do you plan on entering again next year?

Yes

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6. Do you have any special memory they had of watching the Coronation or the Queen’s funeral (if any)?

The late Queen’s lying in state was televised 24/7 and I was glued to it, I found it so calming and emotional. Of course the funeral was magnificent and moving. It doesn’t matter if it is a coronation, a state funeral, or the launching of a battleship, nothing beats the British, we are the best at pomp and ceremony! My eldest daughter is in the RAF and was involved in the Coronation and I held a tea party (using a ERII Coronation embroidered tea cloth) on the day of the Coronation for a few friends, we all watched it on the television together. One of the best bits was when all of the armed forces involved in the coronation were lined up in gardens of Buckingham Palace and gave their Majesties three cheers – that was fantastic!

More on Amy – Amy Willcock is a successful writer of nine cookery and entertainment books. Born in Chicago, she moved to the UK in 1980. Specialising in country living and game recipes, Amy wrote a regular monthly column for The Shooting Gazette for over 19 years writing about food, country lifestyle and gundogs. During the Covid lockdown in Spring 2020, Amy started a new venture, KBO Cakes. The only way she could “send a slice of home” to her children serving in the forces and at university, was to send them a cake. “Nothing says “I’m thinking about you” more than a homemade cake. Everyone needs a little morale booster every now and then” says Amy. www.kbocakes.co.uk Amy was previously in the hotel business - one of which, The George on the Isle of Wight, had a Michelin starred restaurant. Amy held Lifestyle, Cookery and Aga Workshops teaching people to cook, arrange flowers and set beautiful tables along with how to run a house. Her lifestyle and Aga workshops have been described as ‘finishing schools for people in their 30’s’ and Nigella Lawson wrote in Vogue, “Amy Willcock, hand holder to Aga owners everywhere”. She is a founder member of Yarmouth Women’s Institute, the subject of a BBC 4 documentary, and is a WI Cookery and Preserves judge. Amy has appeared on Market Kitchen, Kirstie’s Homemade home, Celebrity Masterchef, and judged the perfect Sunday Lunch with John Torode and Gregg Wallace on Masterchef and is a regular Food and Lifestyle contributor to local radio. Amy lives in Yorkshire where she manages Warter Priory Shoot office, trains her gun-dogs, and enjoys entertaining her friends and family.

🍽Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia