Cork Pops

Bar Towels

Thirty-odd designs, all $7, and most of them are jokes. That is the point: a bar towel is one of the very few cheap gifts that gets read out loud when it is opened.

12

Every one is 21" × 32", 100% cotton and screen printed, so they work as actual towels — drying the bar, mopping a spill, taking a hot dish out of the oven — rather than as something decorative that gets put in a drawer.

Picking one

  • A host you know well — the corkscrew puns, which escalate: “Waiting to be Screwed” through to “Totally Screwed”.
  • A host you do not — “Wine Country”, “Save the Ales” or “Hello Bubbles”. Funny without anyone having to decide how funny they are allowed to find it.
  • A crowd over forty — “Drinking Our Children’s Inheritance” is the reliable one, and the one guests photograph.
  • Beer drinkers — “Group Therapy”, “Relief Pitcher”, “I’d Tap That”.
  • December — “Dear Santa — I Tried” and “Oh Tannenbaumed”, both with matching cocktail napkins.

At $7 they work as stocking fillers and secret santa gifts, but the trick is pairing: a towel with a matching napkin, or a towel with a $7 foil cutter, reads as a considered set rather than a single cheap thing. More on that in hostess gifts under $20.