With the porcelain and glassware presentation, Doriana and Massimiliano Fuksas have completed the "Colombina collection", a table set that not only stand out for its aesthetic quality but offer a refined and ambitious innovation for current dining services pratices 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 francaise. 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 practiclity, 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, raionnèes et demostratives 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, ome afther the other, just as we do today.

Before service à òa russe was adopted, the service à la francaise was used, which was a serving method that hand 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. Staring in the second half of the 19th century, service à la francaise 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 plesing 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 thet I see as quite close to a sort of resurgence of the service a la francaise. Certainly it is not a sterile and gratuitours 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 easity 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 modernization of the service a la francaise with this design.