{"id":1264,"date":"2009-02-10T00:38:01","date_gmt":"2009-02-10T07:38:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/heavylittleobjects.com\/?p=1264"},"modified":"2026-02-19T10:27:45","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T18:27:45","slug":"a361-china-napkin-rings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/heavylittleobjects.com\/?p=1264","title":{"rendered":"#a361 :: China napkin rings"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"021009\"<\/a>Around our house, I make dinner one of two ways:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Crank something out in a hurry on the stove, slap it down in front of the kids and hope they don’t moan or spill all over their clothes as they forget to use their utensils;<\/li>\n
  2. Or grill something big and munchy (think ribs or sesame-garlic chicken with corn on the cob) on the barbecue, hand out plastic utensils and grab a beer.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    But somewhere in the world, people are bunching up their good linen napkins in lovely napkin rings for fear of – what, I don’t know – having their napkins look unceremonious.<\/p>\n

    I appreciate the culture of a good table setting. On our trip to London last summer, we got to tour Windsor Castle’s grand ballroom, where HM the Queen<\/a> had ordered a state dinner prepared for 150. Picture that in gold dining utensils set aside 150 bone china plates on gold-plated chargers, each with little LED floodlights illuminating a hand-calligraphed nametag beneath this ceiling<\/a> and you begin to get the picture.<\/p>\n

    These rings (a loan from Dad<\/a>) are part of the same Culture of Preciousness, about which I have bloviated<\/a> a bit in the past.<\/p>\n

    Precious<\/i>. When you somehow need to feel special by making your guests feel special.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Around our house, I make dinner one of two ways: Crank something out in a hurry on the stove, slap it down in front of the kids and hope they don’t moan or spill all over their clothes as they forget to use their utensils; Or grill something big and munchy (think ribs or sesame-garlic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ephemera","category-fetish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/heavylittleobjects.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/heavylittleobjects.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/heavylittleobjects.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heavylittleobjects.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heavylittleobjects.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1264"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/heavylittleobjects.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1832,"href":"http:\/\/heavylittleobjects.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1264\/revisions\/1832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/heavylittleobjects.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heavylittleobjects.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heavylittleobjects.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}