When a present becomes a treasure and a story
Here’s how a towel becomes a unique present, able to tell a story hundreds of years old and to make a bathroom extremely elegant
By Donatella Cinelli Colombini
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Magic? Not at all, we are in the boutique for Tuscan handicraft, where we can find what we need. The shop is in Siena, in the centre of the Palio city, and is called Toscana Lovers. One finds ceramics, cutlery, shawls, embroidered sheets…. and many other objects of great tradition made nearly entirely by hand.
We would like a towel, but not any old towel but something that will remember us to someone dear it and give a touch of class to their bathroom. So here is something unique: these towels are in lines or cotton, made by the wooden looms built in Anghiari two centuries ago during the Napoleonic occupation and still today functional. It is these centenary machines that give the cloth a particular softness, and then of course the designs that recall those visible in Sienese paintings from Medieval times onwards, there is even a towel with the typical rhombus from Pienza and the fringes which recall the one portrayed in the Maestà by Duccio di Buoninsegna (1308-11).
In other words it is not a banal object even though it is not expensive it is in
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fact able to tell of a civilisation and consequently able to embellish a bathroom so must be obviously matched to the tiles.
In the end we leave Toscana Lovers with a parcel that is more than a simple present; it is a story about antique Tuscan traditions, something unique apt for the person to whom it is destined not an ordinary and casual choice. Remember that Toscana Lovers is a place full of surprises, a pleasant way of spending some free time!