Sometimes it takes a major catastrophe to shake down a handful of good ideas. For sixty-one year old Carol Pulitzer, creator, illustrator and designer of Butterfly Inc., it took the leveling force of divorce and Hurricane Katrina on her family’s tie business to inspire her to start her own textile design company.
Butterfly Inc. began in 2006 with a line of whimsical hand-printed tee shirts designed for pregnant mothers and babies. It was Pulitzer’s lifetime love of cooking and entertaining—combined with her self-confessed fear of germs—that instigated the creation of her small business’ most successful product to date: hand-printed linen cocktail napkins that individually (and artfully) distinguish party guest’s glasses from another.
Illustrated and designed by Pulitzer, the 100 per cent linen cocktail napkins are mini-works of art that help party goers from unintentionally sharing wine or cocktail glasses while keeping safe vulnerable table tops from wine stains. Easy to use–and certainly more tasteful than bedazzled wine jewelry–Butterfly Inc.’s cocktail napkins feature dancing hot dogs, Hans Christian Anderson paper cut outs, Egyptian Bubbles, Indian mandalas and repeating circles of numbers and letters so that every guest has a unique image to call their own.
A perfect host or house warming gift, these artful little cocktail napkins are available on the Butterfly Inc. website for $20 for a set of six.