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Hunt Littlefield's table - a wide ribbon with a single twist wrapped around plain linen napkins.

The national tour of Dining by Design just wrapped up in San Francisco and The Chronicle recently shared their trip to the event. The annual showcase displays table arrangements (or entire rooms) by top designers and comes just in time for a little holiday tabletop inspiration...

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These are a few of our favorites from The Chronicle's highlights. You might even find you want to try out some of these ideas at home:

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Tim Murphy Design Associates table for Herman Miller

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Academy of Art students: A chandelier made of about 1,000 plastic water bottle bottoms threaded onto strings and dangling from circular bases around red lightbulbs. (The challenging part, they said, was cutting the bottoms to about an inch or so.) If you try this at home, start collecting the bottles with the sexy, curvy bottoms, rather than the staid, flat ones.

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Gensler's display

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Beringer/Blackwell table: fruit in the glass cylinders with lilies and branches.

Hosted by DIFFA (Design Industries Foundation Fighting Aids), this was the 11th annual Dining by Design. Photos: Eric Luse, The Chronicle