The Elegance Behind Tea Towels

Tea towels are kind of a fancy name for what we simply call a “dish” towel. A big difference is that tea towels are usually made from linen, while dish towels are mostly made from terry cloth. Linen is gentler on fancier or more delicate dishes. There is also a similarity between tea towels and dish rags; they are both used for cleaning. But dish rags also wipe down counters and you wouldn’t normally use a dish rag on a nicer dish since it could leave scratch marks. Tea towels are not just for nicer dishes, they are also used to cover left over food that is going to be put in the fridge or simply to the side if it is bread. Since tea towels are kept cleaner (for the most part) they are more intended for covering food that we’re going to eat.

Tea towels were meant for fine China and other delicate dishes, but if you don’t even have that in your kitchen they make great towels in general for drying clean dishes. They are the kind of towels meant for getting personalized as a gift for someone’s wedding, baby shower, birthday, Christmas, really anything that someone who is getting their own place needs.