All About Bath Towels

How Turkey saved bathing civilization.

Sick of scrubbing your bathtub? Just be happy it doesn't give you splinters.

Perhaps the ultimate affirmation of the comfort and usefulness of bath towels comes from Douglas Adams' book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: 'A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have.' Here then is our brief salute to bath towels, an underappreciated yet always essential part of daily life.

Primitive bath towels

During the Middle Ages, Europeans frequently fell in and out of love with bathing. Up until the Renaissance, bathhouses and steam baths were fairly common, yet bath towels had yet to be invented. More primitive views of bathing took hold for a time. Bathhouses were seen as places of loose morals, and immersion in water was believed to spread disease.

Meanwhile, to the east, the Ottoman Turks had transformed bath towels into a luxurious art form. In the 17th century, the Turks began using a weaving technique that gave their bath towels not only the warp and weft of regular linen, but also piles, or loops of thread that stuck out from the cloth.

Piles were a revolution in bath towel design. These extra loops of cloth were perfect for capturing water, and Turkey already had a strong cotton industry in place to produce these new bath towels. As the phrase 'Turkish baths' would suggest, the Turkish take their bathing seriously.

Medieval European bath towels were very small, made from basic linen, and relied on weaves such as the huckaback or honeycomb for extra absorbency rather than piles. The primary piece of bathroom linen was not the bath towel, but a sort of bathtub sheet that was draped inside the wooden tub to prevent the bather from getting splinters.

Bath towels in Europe were also quite expensive until the textile industry was mechanized following the Industrial Revolution. Until then, those who could afford it would have servants drape them in sheets as they stepped out of the bath.

The 19th century was the first to see the widespread acceptance and distribution of bath towels. By the late 1800s, terry cloth and cotton had replaced linen as the primary bath towel materials, and increased mechanization resulted in the opening of factories capable of mass bath towel production.

Modern bath towels

Never before in the history of civilization have we been confronted with so many different ways to wipe the water from our clean and naked bodies. Bath towels have gone from being expensive rarities to commonplace objects. Luxury bath towels are purchased not to be used, but for a decorative effect in the bathroom.

Faced with so many choices, how do you know which bath towels to buy' There are a few basic guidelines that will help you to buy bath towels that are comfortable and durable. Look for bath towels that feature thick loops packed close together and have a tightly woven fabric base. Cotton bath towels will be more absorbent than bath towels made from synthetic materials. And with bath towels, it's generally true that thicker is better.

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