We bought a box of mixed textiles at auction last week which included some lovely vintage tea towels. Great looking – and full of useful facts & figures too! Here are a few of our favourites.

The ‘Housewives Guide to British Metric Measure’ was aimed at helping us Brits through the process of change from imperial to metric measures – a process which started here in the 1960s and is still ongoing for most people! We certainly use a combination of imperial & metric measures in this household. Metres, feet, inches, miles, kilometres, kilos, pounds, pints, litres, Fahrenheit & Centigrade all jumbled up together – we just grab whichever seems to suit!

Fabulous decoration and ideal ready reckoner this one!

This next tea towel was issued by the British Diabetic Association.

A colourful textile, featuring foodstuffs with recommended daily allowances.

Various letters & symbols indicate calories, carbohydrate, fat & protein content.

The next tea towel concentrates solely on calorific values for those watching their weight.

It’s a very striking design and would look great framed.

And the value for sweets? “too many calories” it says. We’ll be the judge of that!!

This last tea towel is fabulous – a food guide to London restaurants dating from the 1950s or 60s. When did London last have 4-digit telephone numbers?

Some of the restaurants still survive to this day.

We love the ‘specialities’ – from ‘midnight cabaret’ to ‘chicken paprika’!

Drop us a line if you’re interested in any of the tea towels. They’re priced at £20 – £30.