Two sizes, because the napkin that works at lunch is the wrong napkin at dinner. Both are cut from the same 200 thread count percale we weave our sheets from, hemmed on four sides with mitred corners, so they press flat and stay flat through a long table.

20 x 20 in is the dinner napkin — big enough to sit properly across a lap, and still square and deliberate folded beside a plate. 17 x 17 in is the everyday one: breakfast, lunch, cocktails, a coffee table. Laying one table for both? Buy the dinner size and use it for everything. Running a dining room? Most kitchens keep both, and the pass gets through the small one twice as fast.

Percale is the weave that survives a commercial wash. It comes out of a hot cycle looking like itself, takes a fold without fighting, and softens over a season rather than thinning. Six colourways matched to the Plain Cotton palette — and if the one you want is not listed, choose Other Colour and name it in the cart, and we will quote it. Sold in fours, eights and twelves, because nobody has ever needed three.