These wonderful Bertozzi Italian Linen Napkins 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 Napkins are 45 x 45 cm and labelled with the logo of 'Associazone Stampatori Tele Romagnole' which guarantees that they are made using the 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.
