Table Threads and The Electric Bulldozer

Photo courtesy Flickr

Recently I chatted housekeeping with a fellow who inherited his mother’s tablecloths. His day job is in science. Jack’s legacy is linen, the often unrecognized workhorse of its genre. White linen that looks so vulnerable is the toughest fiber to use at the table. It can be bleached and even boiled. Wash hot, spin gently, and square it off to dry on a line, so that ironing is an option unless the duchess is coming to dinner, as Italian designer Bruno Munari said. See Cheryl Mendelson’s “Home Comforts” for details.

A cloth transforms a battered or mediocre tabletop that can otherwise support projects. Cloths can be laid across spring-rods to cover windows (remember that sun eats fibers), serve as bedding, and easily be modified into pillow cases. The French make a charming utility lampshade by hemming a hole in the center of an old napkin and draping the fabric over a cone-shaped glass shade. The tubular fibers of linen transmit light that glows.

Linen does not live forever, so if you are fortunate enough to have some, let it serve you. Put it into active rotation. Fold linen in a slightly different place each time you handle it, since the fibers crack. Iron linen flat, and press folds gently by hand.

For long-term storage, put linen in archival boxes from a specialty chain or roll it around a pole covered in muslin. Shelve textiles in the same living conditions you enjoy yourself. Plastic and humidity are their mortal enemies.

Linen finishes beautifully if it is ironed from the back. Doing so raises the grain and shows off the weave to best advantage. If the piece is embroidered, cover the stitching with a colorless cloth to protect handiwork from the pressure and movement of the iron.

Electricity bulldozes the Victorian aesthetic. Many old white cloths are woven with elaborate patterns meant, like the architecture and costume themselves, to show off the play of light and shadow. They were viewed originally by gas and candle light. Flickering illumination softened and animated the restless surface enrichment of the period, producing an interior background of low-tech moving images.

The mothers and grandmothers of our mothers produced our embroidered legacy. Marketed as “art needle” in department stores, embroidery is a deep tradition in women’s culture, originating with the Copts in Egypt. At the turn of the twentieth century in New York, immigrant women pitied the wealthy who had to buy their embroidery. The work that daughters now blithely discard is a proud store of the wealth and love of our elders. Needlework represents leisure and fine motor skills and is the foundation of the textile industry. The sewing needle itself was one of the first products of the industrial revolution.

-30-

P.S. The first Flickr image that popped up was a breathtaking discovery. Be sure to check out Flickr itself.