Kitchen & Table Linens

Tablecloths sized to the table, not the box:

measure the tabletop and add a drop of roughly a hand span on every side. Round, oval and rectangular cloths are not interchangeable, so a listing that only says how many it seats tells you less than one that gives the shape. Cotton breathes and shrinks a little in the first washes, so buy it slightly generous; linen hangs beautifully and creases at a glance. Polyester comes out of the machine ready to lay and shrugs off sauce, and a wipe-clean vinyl cloth belongs on the table that sees homework and spilt juice before lunch. Runners and placemats protect the middle without hiding the wood; the plates that sit on them are in dinnerware.

The towel on the oven door and the mitt beside it:

terry towelling soaks up a spill and dries hands, but it sheds fluff on whatever it wipes. A flat-weave cotton or linen towel absorbs less at first but dries plates without leaving lint. Oven mitts come in quilted cotton, which is supple, or silicone, which grips and wipes clean; either stops protecting the moment it is damp, because water carries heat straight through to your hand. Pot holders are for lids, not full trays; the tins are in baking.

Mola runners and placemats from Guna Yala:

a mola is made by stacking layers of coloured cotton, cutting the top ones away to reveal the colours beneath and turning every cut edge under with tiny hand stitches. Guna women sew them as blouse panels, and many end up set into runners and placemats that carry weeks of hand work and are washed cold, by hand and on their own. Ordinary linen is cheap new: a runner or a set of three kitchen towels costs around $10 to $20, and pre-owned plain linen mostly moves still in its packaging or as part of a matching set. Mola works the other way round. A medium hand-sewn panel with fine stitching sells for around $20 to $60 and large, dense pieces pass $100, so a runner or a set of placemats carrying several panels is priced by the mola in it, not by the fabric around it. Pre-owned pieces are valued the same way, and what costs them money is run colour and loose stitching.

The back of a mola and the folds of a stored tablecloth:

turn a mola over before anything else. The back of a hand-sewn one shows the folded edges and small stitches of every cut; a printed copy has a blank or printed reverse, and a machine-made one shows the even, unbroken line of a sewing machine. Look into a cut edge and the layers should be visible, and slightly wavering lines are a sign of hands, not a fault. A pink halo creeping into a neighbouring colour means it was washed hot and the dye ran, and that will not come out. On a tablecloth kept folded in a closed cupboard, grey or black specks in the weave are mildew and do not wash out, yellow lines along the folds come from years in one position, and a stain gone brown and stiff was ironed over and is set. Vinyl cracks along its creases with age. On mitts, look for scorch marks and padding worn thin at the fingertips.

A tablecloth listing that names the table it fits:

give the measurements, the shape, the fibre from the care label and how many napkins come with it, and photograph it spread on a table in daylight so the colour reads true. Show any mark, however small. For a mola piece, photograph the back as well as the front and say which community or maker it came from, if you know. A buyer coming in from Chitré for a mola runner will turn it over to study the stitching before any price is agreed, so meet in good daylight and bring it loosely folded rather than sealed in plastic, which is how mildew starts.