Cocktail Napkins’ Barnyard Roots

Telephone interviews can be a tad nervewracking, if only for the throat glump that always seems to settle in just as the phone rings.  Clearing the pipe with a tad of aplomb rather than a hack is, to say the least, difficult. So it was with some excitement that today’s chitty chat with a Dallas newspaper was glump-free…a situation I attribute to just how much I enjoyed the questions. 
The reporter, a fellow, queried from a male perspective on vintage household linens, which translates to: he knew not of what he was speaking, but gave it his best shot. The questions ran the gamut of “what would I say to a guy about setting a table with a cloth” to “what would I say if a guy used my pretty towel to wipe his lawn mower greasy hands.” Delightful!
One thing we touched on was home entertaining, and my hoorah! for the return of the cocktail hour, a time of day when adults can do with a little grown-up hooplah without a huge commitment of time or effort or expense to the host/hostess. Gathering is the point of the invitation, and to frou frou it a bit, add cloth to the service. Cloth, as in cocktail napkins.  
Bitty bastions of the 1920s, these small-sized napkins were often decorated with a rooster, the pictoral for the word cocktail. Another Vintage Tidbit! This set, which includes glass bottom covers to shield wooden furniture from the horror of moisture stains, was photographed for The Kitchen Linens Book. 

And this set, which is cross-stitched, I just picked up at a local shop. Er, snatched up is more like it, because not only is there a rooster, but it appears he’s attempting to pick up a martini…a real feat for his little claw foot.  

xxea
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