The Tea Towel: Perspectives on an Everyday Item

The meaning and history behind the humble tea towel. 

The dishwasher has robbed the good old kitchen towel of some of its practical significance. Nevertheless, it remains present in many households, hand-woven or industrially produced, lint-free or absorbent, dirty or clean, inherited or replaceable. As a textile and as an everyday item, it is emblematic of topical social issues, such as unpaid care work, colonialism, and equality. Moreover, a tea towel evokes manifold associations and is linked to countless personal memories, experiences, and anecdotes.

For a long time, specially-made kitchen towels were a luxury and reserved for the upper classes. Industrial mass production has changed this, and today two developments can be observed: while kitchen towels are displayed as design objects in museum stores and craft stores, they are also standardized, cheap goods.

In The Tea Towel: Perspectives on an Everyday Item, thirteen authors, artists, and designers enter into a dialogue with the object and examine it from a journalistic, artistic, technical, and cultural-historical perspective. The contributions of very different tones complement each other and create new references. Texts and images invite a rediscovery of the everyday kitchen towel as a sensual object that carries much more depth beneath its seemingly ordinary surface.

Vera Roggli is a textile designer living and working between Italy, Switzerland, and Belgium.

Eva Wolf is a graphic designer and illustrator;Basil Linder is a graphic designer and typeface designer. They jointly run the Bern-based design firm Studio Eva Basil.

Basil Linder is a graphic designer and typeface designer; Eva Wolf is a graphic designer and illustrator. They jointly run the Bern-based design firm Studio Eva Basil.