A follow up

 Many thanks to all of you who have weighed in on the  Schmatta puzzles post.

Several of you, including my husband, identified this set as an antimacassar set, or chair set that is missing one of the arm pieces. I had wondered if the pieces were too small to stay put on an upholstered chair but one of my wise readers mentioned that these sets were often attached to chairs with small brass pushpins. I have contemporary plastic-headed ones made with a spiral-shaped pin that screws into the upholstery.

 Sue in MN explained the mystery of the cloths with the little valances.

Apparently, they were the answer to the inevitable messiness of open shelving. Open cabinets could be fitted with small brass curtain rods and you could install a sweet little decorative curtain to hide what you didn't want to keep in public view.

I probably have half a dozen of these little curtains in my collection. Some of them like this one began life as tea towels. Others were made for the purpose of being a curtain. Several of these little curtains with headers are nearly identical decorated with sweet eyelet embroidery at the edges. Some have different fancy work in the center. The base curtains are so similar I suspect that they may have been commercially produced. I also suspect that various motifs for decoration appeared in women's magazines.

Our household has several rituals peculiar to us. One of them is the game show "Shirt or Schmatta???" where we hold up an undershirt that belongs to my husband and try to decide if it is a wearable shirt or if it belongs in the rag bin. In your house, the difference between the two categories may be entirely clear. In our home deciding the proper category is far more difficult.

Below is the spinoff of that game---called "Tea Towel or Schmatta???". I use my mother's old tea towels to wrap warm bread before putting it into the fridge.

My mother probably bought this tea towel before I was born. I am sentimental enough to have mended it often. The last trip through the wash had convinced me that this towel has passed from being a tea towel into a new fabulous life as a schmatta. 

My husband was not convinced. He argued for the utility of this textile for wrapping bread. 

My late mother once said to me that since my husband didn't get rid of old periodicals he would never ever get rid of me.  Some had commented that I might be insulted by my mother comparing me to an old issue of Barrons magazine. Instead, I am actually kind of charmed by my husband's loyalty to the familiar.