Vintage Matouk Embroidered Placemat Set of Eight, Unused, c. 1968–1985

The Piece

An eight piece Matouk table linen set, still sealed in its original packaging and to all appearances never used. The ground is a soft oyster cream, closely woven and smooth, and the whole of the border is worked in a coral red satin stitch: a double line running parallel to each edge, mitred at the corners into a long shallow V, with a small lozenge set at the centre point where the two lines meet. It is a restrained piece of drawing, geometric rather than floral, and the coral reads warm rather than bright against the cream.

The embroidery is machine worked but densely laid, the stitches packed tight enough to stand slightly proud of the cloth, and the line holds its width all the way around without wavering at the turns. The package retains its stiffening card and the printed manufacturer's label, which reads Permanent Press, Soil Release, Styled by Matouk, For a Lifetime of Luxury, fifty per cent Dacron polyester and fifty per cent cotton, Style 108, eight piece set, Made in U.S.A.

The set is offered exactly as found, sealed. Opening the wrap to count and photograph the pieces individually would end the thing that makes it interesting, so the composition is given as the label gives it.

History & Provenance

Matouk was founded in 1929 by John Matouk, a Syrian immigrant weaver, and built its name in Fall River, Massachusetts, on fine table and bed linens sold through department stores to households that expected linen to last a generation. The firm is still in business and still American, which makes its older Made in U.S.A. stock unusually traceable to a single continuing maker.

The label dates the set more precisely than the design does. Dacron is DuPont's trade name for polyester. Permanent press and soil release are both finishing technologies of the later 1960s, the first introduced to keep a blended cloth from needing an iron, the second developed shortly after to solve the problem permanent press created, namely that treated polyester blends attracted and held oily soil. A set advertising both finishes together, on a Dacron and cotton ground, cannot be earlier than that moment. It belongs to the period when American linen houses were selling easy care as a luxury rather than a compromise.

That is also why a sealed example survives. These were bought for good, put in a linen press for a table that never quite warranted them, and forgotten, which is the ordinary history of almost every unused linen set that reaches the market.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

Coral on cream is a harder colour pairing to find than it sounds, and it does something no white set can: it warms a table without committing it to a season. The border is geometric enough to sit under modern china and old enough in feeling to sit under transferware, which is a wider range than most patterned linen manages. And because the finish is a blend, this is a set you can actually put on a table and then put in a machine, which is the reason it was bought in the first place and the reason it will get used rather than admired.