These wonderful Bertozzi Italian Linen Tea Towels are made from 100% Organic linen, hand block printed using hand carved pear wood printing blocks The wooden blocks are then soaked with printing dyes. Traditional colours are derived from ancient recipes handed down through generations or later developments resulting from their research and the development of innovative and eco-friendly blending, production and fixing processes.
This kind of printing is suitable for any kind of surface and is wash resistant.
The Bertozzi
Italian Linen Tea Towels are labelled with the logo of
'Associazone Stampatori Tele Romagnole' which guarantees that they are
made using Italian Renaissance printing techniques using hand carved
wood blocks, hand beaten with a mallet.
Situated in the northern
hills of Italy near the Adriatic Sea, Stamperia Bertozzi has been
crafting exceptional ceramics and tableware for over three-generations.
They are renowned for their stampe a mano block-printed linens for the
home. Everything is made by hand the traditional way, from custom dyes
and glazes to hand-molded Limoges porcelain. This results in products
with a unique fingerprint, such as brayer lines, brush strokes or the
outline of their hand-chiseled pear-tree wood stamps pressed into crisp
linen.
Founded in 1920, Bertozzi now employs more than 20 artisans
at their Gambettola workshop. Their magnificent colors derive from
vegetal bases concocted from secret recipes passed down for the last
half-century. Playful, but sophisticated motifs dance across their
ceramics and linens, placed there by traditional Italian block-print
techniques dating back hundreds of years.
Keeping an eye on both
sustainability and innovation, they utilize renewable steam energy and
eliminate excess waste from overstock production by following a strict
made-to-order system. Their fabrics are treated with eco-friendly
processes and they contribute to the research of globally accessible
sustainable dye. This integrity in design is palpable within their work,
gifting their exquisitely earthy products a simple, but authentic
voice.
It was in the 1920s when Luigi Bertozzi,a cabinet maker
from Gambettola, began to experiment with the preparation of “martial
dye”: an anti-anaemic, rust-colored therapeutic mixture that stains
fabrics persistently and whose origin dates back to ancient Roman times.
It
is said that the secret recipe was revealed to the inhabitants of the
area by the Centurion Gambectola. The elements of the mixture are simple
and common: rusty iron, flour, wine vinegar, but the dosage and the way
to mix them is punctual and specific and the recipe is jealously
guarded. Even today.
Thus, the Bertozzi workshop was born. Families
used to bring their hemp canvases to embellish with hand printing and
tablecloths were printed with floral designs, bunches of grapes, vine
leaves, roosters and ears of wheat.
At that time hemp was widely
cultivated in Romagna to obtain the yarn and in every house there was at
least one hand loom. Weft, Warp, shuttle that shuttles, were words,
gestures and sounds which everyone recognized since childhood.
In the
1930s Luigi participated in the Triennale of Milan, inside the Palazzo
dell'Arte, and created a vast library of colours. He created his own
archive of original drawings and started collaborations with artists and
designers for dedicated collections.
From the second half of the
1960s Pierpaolo transformed the laboratory into a structured artisan
enterprise and opened to sales throughout the national territory.
Since the 2000s, Gianluigi has expanded the range of printed materials but it is the Organic Linen that remains pre-eminent.
With
particular attention to the environmental impact, he developed an
exclusive eco-sustainable finishing technique, powered by renewable
energies, which releases nothing but water vapour into the atmosphere.
