The Linen Dish Towel

I have dozens of dish towels. In a single morning, I use more dish towels than most people use all week. This means that during the course of a week, I have to launder more dish towels than most people wash all week.

I have favorite dish towels. Some of them make great pot holders. Some of them dry the most delicate glasses with nary a streak. Some of them hang nicely from my apron ties, not too cumbersome or bulky. And when I am caught in the tedious chore of folding them after a tumble in the dryer, I put them in an order that suits me, as I know how I will later be grabbing them from the stack while I am working.

While folding dish towels this evening. I stopped to consider the best one of all. It has had quite a journey. You see, my most favorite dish towel was never meant to be a dish towel. It really is too noble of birth to be wiping down damp pots and pans, but it does the job so beautifully that I just can't let it go. This favorite dish towel started life as a interior decorator's flat-fold sample. A flat-fold, as an FYI, is a really large piece of fabric that a decorator can use to swath the back of Mrs. So-and-So's ho-hum sofa and exclaim, "See?!! Won't this be fabulous with the Cowtan and Tout wallpaper ?!" Mrs. So-and-So then can see how the interior is going to be stunningly transformed. Hopefully so much so that Mr. So-and-So won't grumble too much when the decorator's bill arrives.

If that sounds like a rarefied ritual, it probably is. It is certainly rarefied enough that not every flat-fold sample earns its keep. Many of them have to be retired with wasteful regularity.

This poor dish towel that I love so much never made it to the upholsterer's workbench to make over a sofa. Nor did it provide inspiration for a dramatic set of draperies. And it's a little sad, really, because it really is a glorious piece of fabric.

It is a wonderful linen. It wrinkles enough to let you know it's linen, but not so much as to look disheveled. It is woven, not just printed, with the most cheerful subject matter: a gaggle of tropical birds (cockatiels to myna-birds) gaze happily upon the lush fruits of the branches in which they are perched (papayas to pomegranates). Lest this sound like a blindingly tacky explosion of color, let me inform you that the whole thing is on the most understated warm brown background. If some great lady were to decorate her husband's study in their Florida home, where she wanted a whimsical celebration of Floridian motifs and he just wanted a masculine room where he could read the Journal in peace, thank you very much, then this is the fabric they would absolutely have to have.

But the Floridian couple never called, and the study never got made over.

And so the beautiful flat-fold sample became a dish-towel. (All of us, even flat-folds, have to do something for a living.) When I lay the dish towel out on a counter, to catch stray splashes from the sink, its bold pattern pleases my eye. I am grateful that it takes the abuse of being wadded-up, to buff the inside of a stock pot. I can hardly believe that despite being washed a couple of times a week for the last three years, the only real wear I see is a frayed edge, from where I had to tear off the fabric manufacturer's label when I gave the old flat-fold a new lease on life as a dish towel.

I don't really know if I am weaving (ouch...I know, but an unavoidable pun!) a sad tale or a happy one, but the jist of it is that this genteel decorator fabric has become a common kitchen rag. Riches to rags, quite literally. But how I love that flat-fold sample as a kitchen rag. And there have been folks with an eye for detail who have seen it laying on a counter and have complimented it...so obviously superior in both beauty and function it is.

How lucky am I to have this lovely linen dish towel?