For an autumn round-up of flavor now, it’s easy to fill this week’s market basket with eggplant and red peppers to grill, saving perfect stems of sweet chasselas grapes for the basket’s top layer. Then, when setting the table for an evening’s feast with friends, I reach for a splash of color like none other: Merimekko. These Finnish textiles may be referred to as vintage table-top, but the scattering of fruity forms has such a direct link to the mood of this bountiful season – I can’t imagine using a bland underpinning for a colorful meal. My favorite tablecloth is simply titled ‘Tori’ (Marketplace) by Maija Isola, Merimekko’s signature designer of the sixties and seventies. She artfully mastered the play of bold, clear colors in floral patterns as well as subtle nuances of tone in a Byzantium series. All of Isola’s fabrics were printed in long repeats that could be hung against a white wall as easily as being spread across a pine table. This penchant for Nordic graphics has been at work (in fact, it’s in my blood) long before I traded textiles and teaching for…. writing about tomatoes, grapes and cheese over a decade ago.

The earliest sweet chasselas grapes, clusters of translucent green pearls, arrive in September – but I wait a few weeks, when more mature bunches are harvested along the Garonne and in the Tarn. By mid-October, sweet-sharp Italia grapes are heaped on market stalls, ready for the simplest of desserts: fruit and cheese. If I’m very lucky, some clever vendor will have a few boxes of both purple and white figs to grace the fruit plate or to poach in lightly spiced syrup. And under all these treasures, Maija Isola’s vibrant colors and shapes will dance across the table.

Next up: Cabbages and kings, a day of vendange, and a Paris baguette under my arm.