Wash on Monday - storing antique and vintage napkins and place mats

Welcome to the first "Wash on Monday" post for the blog. As I stated earlier, I love linens enough to give them their own daily focus. Most gracious Southern hostesses I know love linens. Of course I know people from other parts of the country also love linens. Southerners haven't completely cornered the market on that. I think the percentages are just higher down here! We simply cannot live without our linens, even in this modern age. One of my favorite American linen purveyors, Leontine Linens, is the labor of love of a talented Southern girl, Jane Scott Hodges.

Leontine Linens

Another good Southern girl, Tara McSherry, from Chattanooga, Tennessee, is keeping the art of hand embroidery alive.

Isn't she lovely? Notice what you don't see? A machine.

I want her to hand monogram every napkin I own.

I've always loved antique and vintage linens, most especially the ones that were hand-worked... cotton, flax, silk, crochet, lace, needlepoint. I'm simply beguiled by the fact that ladies once spent hours engaged in needlework. All of those beautiful monograms and hand embroidered floral sprays... they just make my heart skip a beat. I imagine the conversations exchanged over those hours with needle and thimble. I definitely don't want to romanticize everything that was going on during the last century, plus or minus a few decades either direction, to be sure. However, one cannot fail to appreciate the beauty in bespoke needlework.

And so my collection grows. I scour estate sales, auctions, tag sales and antique malls, looking for more. I'm now the steward of what I find and I want them to live on in good condition.

It was that desire that started me down a rabbit hole of research about linens. What would I need to do to keep them in their best shape for years to come?

I began by looking at the tragic pieces I'd run across over time; and there were many of them.

Take this napkin, for instance.

Can you see the damage along the fold? I bought them folded and didn't notice the damage until I got home. These napkins are tissue thin and as soon as I sat down and really looked at it, I realized the problem: the stress of living for years, perhaps decades, folded, was too much for them. Take a closer look.

You can see in that photo how the way it was stored adversely affected it. I ran across all types of damage, though: old food stains, pest nibbles, torn threads and trims... and lots of these fold stresses.

The first step to prevent such damage so that you can actually use your napkins and place mats is to first wash all linens properly. Certainly there are places to which you can send good linens off to be cleaned. If your bank account and inclination supports that, then by all means, do it. I, on the other hand, actually take pleasure in caring for my little woven treasures.

I've done a whole YouTube video about my linen cleaning process. I spent a lot of time looking into the right products and procedures. Go watch the video. At some point in time, I also plan to make a video and a blog post about how I iron linens... another vital step for "working" linens. Call me crazy, but I actually enjoy ironing them. I do not use starch but I do like them lightly pressed (although you need to take an easy hand.)

For now, though, let's just talk about storing your linens once they have been cleaned and pressed.

My research into caring for linens led me to the Smithsonian Institute's web site where it had wonderful advice for the home collector. I figured if it was good enough for the curators at one of the largest collections in the United States, it was good enough for me. You really should read it but here are the highlights:

1. It's best to store linens flat or rolled. Folding is a final resort.
2. Don't store linens in plastic. They need to breathe and plastic off-gasses. (This goes for paper and photos as well.. but that really is a whole other post).
3. Stored fabrics should be kept away from the light.
4. Environment is important: The temperature should be 65-70 degrees and relative humidity should be 40-50%.

If you plan on only storing your linens and never using them again, much as a museum would, then I would offer slightly different advice (see the Smithsonian link above for more on that), but for the home conservator of "working" linens, this is the best advice I think you can get.

So tell me... do you love using fine, real linens for entertaining at home? Is it worth all the trouble for you?

XoxoL