Tea Towels To Dry For

A good lesson to learn about good home upkeep, is that the housekeeper’s tools can themselves be decorations; from teapots and plates, to dustpans and the much-neglected bin. But what about that stiffened, yellowing tea towel, which, to be honest, we rarely ever use?

 Drying the dishes may not traditionally set one’s pulse racing, but perhaps that’s because we’ve been scarred by the tea towels of the past. Banish all thoughts from your heads of prancing badgers and fluffy rabbits in frock coats; banish also those school-produced specimens upon which every miscreant in the class fashions their own Quentin Blake-style likeness; lest I forget, let’s also banish those ones with the red trim that people wear to parties when they go as wealthy oil barons. Now our minds are blank, we can gaze beatifically towards the horizon at something entirely new.

  To Dry For is a rather special website providing nothing but chic tea towels, each one with a delightfully untraditional design, ranging from kitsch, to pretty, to slightly more manly graphic art-like designs. But To Dry For don’t stop at improving the look of the things, they’re also out to improve our cultural education by commissioning artists to put their stamp on our kitchens, for example Julia Pott’s  gorgeous statuesque polar bears on the Bake Me towel. An animator and illustrator, Pott’s slightly spiky sketches are innocent in rendition, and often comical in content, as a quick browse of her portfolio will demonstrate.

Also a contributor to the burgeoning tea towel scene (yes I did just say that) is the brilliant Stuart Kolakovic  his orange and brown ‘Right on’ tea towel matching the cheerful bucolic outlook of much of his other work, which includes some incredible comic books (see his website - you’ll be bowled over).
Other designs include prints of Mr T, (the item is of course named Mr Tea Towel ), pigeons, tea party scenes, and also random food items; my personal favourite is Cabbage.

Furthermore, Londoners will no doubt appreciate the block-colour pop prints of landmarks such as the Trellic Tower, the Barbican and an east London skyline, including St. Paul’s and our beloved Gherkin.

Speaking from experience, these make great gifts, and each item is so blinking cheerful that a half hour spent by the sink will surely henceforth be a period of great joy throughout the land, with a little bit of art making it into the everyday. Bring on the artist-endorsed sink plungers, says I.