I am not, as a rule, a napkins person. But occasionally I have been seized by a vaporous mania of Hyacinth Bucket-ness and have thought that napkins are a brilliant idea.
But the problem with napkins is this: at one or other dinner, someone will spill a great load of red wine on one of your napkins and you will then be operating with an odd number for evermore.
(Actually there are loads of problems with napkins – washing and ironing are two more – but this is the main one.)
The solution is a clutch of very jazzy napkins, which can take a few indelible stains in their stride. They would also liven up my unspeakably plain and rather drab kitchen-diner, decked out in the mutest blues with horrifying cliche of a zinc-topped table.
I was inspired to think about jazzy napkins by a very smart dinner I went to last week, where the napkins were decked out in a sort of green-and-pink paisley swirly pattern of unimaginable jauntiness.
I have no doubt that they were purchased on some sort of dreamy holiday to, like, Rajasthan or Italy – but I will have to make do with these from Anthropologie.
We were given two engraved napkin rings as a wedding present by some oldies who went off list. Never been used…
Nice. I love a napkin. Makes more
of an occasion
Love napkins – but white linen a pain!!
I just trashed a very bitchy comment someone posted here. I WILL NOT allow through comments like that. That’s what MailOnline is for.
On a post about napkins?! That’s funny.
I KNOW
How dare they!
We (my husband and I) use napkins every night, with the two napkin rings I inherited, and it is rather nice but I agree the washing/ironing is a pain. I don’t get mine particularly dirty, but my bloody husband uses his like it’s a damp J-cloth, mopping wine sloshes and wiping greasy fingers on it. Drives me potty BUT red linen napkins take a lot of wine and washing and (usually) ironing and still look presentable when fresh. It’s that or white damask and bleach the bejeesus out of them, and bleach doesn’t deal with lipstick very well.
I think I said all this on the last napkin post too, so apologies.
Dark coloured napkins are definitely the way forward!
You know it doesn’t have to be linen, right? Ikea does gorgeous packs of thick paper napkins and the home/ accessories/ crack shop Tiger has a really excellent range. I have collected and inherited lots of beautiful handmade napkins which I never use for fear of the washing and damaging heirlooms. I stick to Ikea/ Tiger. Really, they’re excellent.
I cannot recommend enough the linen ones at Caravanne. They come in lovely mix-and-match colours and you’re not supposed to iron them. That’s right, the wrinkles are part of “the look”.
Thanks Frank – those are indeed really pretty
My mother used to buy me bonkers, ‘bottom drawer’ type presents like napkins and towel bales when I was a teenager, which I think was her unsubtle way of getting me to move out. Because I didn’t get the message straight away I left home with about a billion white linen napkins in varying shapes and sizes, which I have carted through every flat share in my twenties, and brought with me when I moved in with my then boyfriend, now husband. What the fuck he must have thought is anyone’s guess. I didn’t have any money for the flat deposit but I did have fifty linen napkins and six Le Creuset casseroles.
Because some of her bonkersness clearly rubbed off on me, I save these napkins for ‘best’ i.e. when friends are visiting for weekends, dinner, lunch, which is satisfying in a worryingly Stepford way. When it’s just the hard core family of five, we make do with some stripy John Lewis ones (which, in a ‘down the rabbit hole’ moment of total middle class wankery, I’ve appointed ‘everyday’), but because my children eat like they’ve been raised with wolves, it’s mostly ripped off sheets of Regina mega roll. However, I like your thinking on patterned napkins for hiding tomato stains (which is a bit like people choosing those swirly patterned carpets in the 1970’s!) and though I should be doing some work, I’m going to buy em’ and wow my friends with my eclectic napery.
Wasn’t Eclectic Napery some cool 90s grunge band???
omg let’s start a band
do it Tess
I always dig your posts Tess. It’s the detail x
I have older version Anthropologie ones, they’re just as you say, although mine are oblong and I’m often asked why I have given everyone a tea towel.
and your reply is “because I’m expecting you to do the fucking washing up”
Better than ‘haha, hmm’ that I come up with… I (I read yours in an Imelda Staunton as Martha in ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf’ voice)
These would be really super for a BBQ in the summer also.
Ooooh, I love to bring out the napkins for Friday steak night, which is when we usually have people over. Ours are all white, and I have discovered that if you are willing to bleach the hell out of them, they stand up pretty well. I never iron them; I flap them furiously before hanging them up really exactingly carefully and they look fine… well, no one has ever complained, and anyone who judges on un-ironed napkins is clearly not someone who is going to be a fun dinner guest anyway.
I am quite obsessed with the website “Merchant and Mills”. They sell beautiful linens and cottons. The plan is to order a metre of slate grey/blue linen, divide into 6 squares, hem and viola!!!! instant elegance. There’s only me at home so I can run through them all, bung them in the wash and start again at the beginning of the week x
I wouldn’t say I love ironing and mostly pay someone else to do mine, but pretty napkins and tea towels are my favourite things to iron. I get huge satisfaction from doing a whole set of them perfectly and putting them away in a drawer. (While listening to an esoteric afternoon play on Radio 4.)
that kind of thing is hearty for the soul it’s true x
I do love a proper napkin and am also developing a thing for proper cotton tablecloths – banishing the wipe clean ones! Athough, with two very messy children in the house, washing is an issue!