Kitchen Towel, Sunday, Resting
date: label: Date
content: 1943
notes: label: Caption
content: 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).
setName: label: See more items in
content: Anacostia Community Museum Collection
creditLine: label: Cite As
content: Anacostia Community Museum, Smithsonian Institution, gift of Theresa Allen
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: Anacostia Community Museum
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 2008.0002.0006e
objectType: label: Type
content: towel
objectRights: label: Restrictions & Rights
content: CC0
physicalDescription: label: Medium
content: linen fabric, cotton embroidery thread
label: Dimensions
content: 27 13/16 × 17 3/16 in. (70.6 × 43.6 cm)