I have finally found some time to unpack the chests of linens from my great great grandmother's farm. It is a treasure, one I feel compelled both to maintain but also use. Here is a 12 foot table cloth in beautiful Irish linen from sometime in the 1930s I think. The pattern is a gorgeous combination of sheaves on wheat in long bands, dots and small Art Deco wreaths in the wider spaces of the cloth. It was the sort of fabric that rolled off a bolt -- so the selvages were finished on either side, but not the ends. And it was stiff, heavily starched with the original sizing that over time with oxidation had turned the white linen into a pale butter color. This table cloth also came with a second 12 foot length of fabric -- the linen napkins, laid out like tiles await to be cut and hemmed all around.
And I have four of these beauties with different patterns in the damask. I washed them all, three times to remove the sizing and watched them brighten to a white cloth again--the subtle pattern visible in the shift of light across the cloth. And now comes the hemming -- slow hand work that is really quite satisfying, especially if I position myself in the sun, where the light falls over the work and illuminates not just the placement for the next stitch but also the lovely sheen of the pattern.
Midori Snyder is the author of nine books for children and adults, published in English, French, Dutch, and Italian. She won the Mythopoeic Award for The Innamorati, a novel inspired by early Roman myth and the Italian "Commedia dell'Arte" tradition....
