I love using beautiful antique household table cloths, pillow cases, hand towels and linen table napkins or serviettes, but laundering them requires serious effort. I have quite a collection of table napkins or serviettes, which I’ve bought in various places down the years, including at garage sales and thift shops in the USA, and I use them frequently – but then, those small items are easy to launder.
Large table cloths and bed linens are a different story. Modern bed linens are made of beautiful fabrics that can be thrown into the washing machine and survive the dryer, if the owner isn’t able to hang them outside to dry. And certainly very few people have the domestic staff to launder such things made from quality linen itself. Our sheets are all no-iron blends of cotton and polyester which fold straight out of the dryer. Yeah, yeah, yeah – don’t lecture me about using a dryer – I actually prefer line-dried washing, but won’t go into details about all that here. Life is full of compromises.
I have some large damask tablecloths I bought from a vintage linens stall in the sunday markets here in Montevideo decades ago while we lived in Denver. I used them on our dining table up there, and had 2 sizes – the smaller one was right for the 6 place setting, and the larger one fitted when the extension leaves were in, to seat up to 10 or even 12 people, as it was fairly wide. To launder them after a dinner party was daunting – until I discovered the local dry cleaners in Denver would launder and return them hung over a coat hanger with thick cardboard folded over the horizontal section to prevent a sharp crease, for about $5, an expense I could easily afford any number of times a year back in 90s 🙂
For our decent sized dining table here in Montevideo, I have a couple of large large vintage white linen cloths, but seldom use them as the cost of having one cleaned is now over US$50, and we’re now on a more modest retirement income. I took them out just now to photograph, and see those two really need washing – which I will do, and I’ll ask at the cleaners if they’d just iron them… and if they won’t, I’ll do my best. Ironing linen anything is hard work to get looking really good (says she who loves wearing linen shirts in the summer)
The other in the above group photo is a large polyester damask weave tablecloth, bought in a pre-Christmas sale about 5 years ago. We use it year round, and I don’t think our friends ever look hard at the fairly fine design of holly and ribbons – it’s subtle. The polyester fabric washes like a rag, and it’s not yet showing any signs of wear, even after several years of frequent use. Red wine’s no problem all, plus it’s great to play mahjong on 🙂
