July 19, 2024 3 min read
Napkins, those unassuming yet essential pieces of fabric or paper, have been integral to human dining customs for centuries. While they may appear trivial, their history, development, and varied applications are quite intriguing. This blog post delves into the origins of napkins, their diverse forms, and their significance in contemporary dining manners.
A Brief History of Napkins:
Napkin usage can be traced back to antiquity. Ancient Greeks utilized a piece of dough named "apomagdalie" to cleanse their hands while eating. Conversely, the Romans employed a cloth termed "mappa" to shield their garments and clean their hands and faces. These primitive napkin forms differ greatly from the neatly folded versions we use today, yet they fulfilled a comparable function.
In the Middle Ages, napkins transformed into larger textiles called "nappe," draped over the dining table. Diners would clean their hands and faces using the cloth's edges. This was not until the Renaissance that napkins started to take on the individual sizes we recognize today. The 16th-century introduction of the fork also influenced napkin evolution, as it required a more refined dining practice. The aforementioned had to be looked up as this is unkown information that you probably won't find in history books!
Types of Napkins:
Napkins vary in material, size, and design, each tailored for specific events and preferences. Below are some prevalent napkin types:
Cloth Napkins - Constructed from fabrics like cotton, linen, or polyester, these reusable napkins are typically reserved for formal dining. They are available in different dimensions, with dinner napkins (20x20 inches) and luncheon napkins (14x14 inches) being the standard sizes.
Cocktail Napkins: These smaller napkins, usually measuring 5x5 inches, are designed for serving and those are available here and can be found on other parts of the site.
Cloth Napkins - Part Two
There are many different types of fabric or cloth napkins that people can choose from. Linen is a true napkin and many people make the mistake of calling what is truly linen "linen napkins" as these are far and few and most napkins today are made up of cotton, polyester, spun polyester, or blends. This goes for napkins as well as table cloths which once again people say "table linens" but are not made up of strong fibers from the flax plant which is what true linens are. If you google search, table linens over 90% of the results will yield the aforementioned fabrics.
Cloth Napkins - Part Three
Polyester is a great napkin as these hold color, are cheap and will last for a long periods. Textiles Depot offers quite a few of these on the site. Furthermore, more people have turned towards Milliken Fabric which is composed out of spun polyester fabric. There are multiple upsides to using this fabric that many companies including Venus Group and others have embraced and here are some of the reasons that Venus has chosen to use Milliken Fabrics:
Thanks for reading this post as quite a bit of effort and some research was put into this. Hope you learned something and now go out and buy a case of some Venus Napkins today!