Kitchen Towel, Sunday, Resting

The embroidered design on this linen towel reserves it for kitchen décor rather than for drying dishes. Stitched in cotton thread on a white towel is a woman sitting in bed wearing a blue gingham robe. A man wearing a white apron bears a tray with a blue-and-white teapot and cup, while a child next to the bedside touches the woman’s hand. All look at the viewer, rather than one another. The towel is part of a days-of-the-week set made from a needlecraft kit, a popular creative endeavor in the 1940s, when smaller, single-family homes and new appliances eased the burden of housework for middle-class women. In contrast to housekeeping tasks such as ironing, baking, and sewing depicted on the Monday through Saturday towels, the woman rests on “Sunday.” Blanche Ford Hart (1897-1992) likely embroidered these towels for use in the family’s kitchen. Her mother, Mary Thompson Ford (1861-1960), was both college-educated and a proud homemaker in Jersey City, NJ. An apron and a tablecloth complete the days-of-the-week collection (2008.0002.0006a-g).