Journal

Stories of Italian living, the art of the table, and the places behind MI RE LA

Italian Lifestyle Journal

Where would you like to start?

Everything we have written on linen, on the motifs we embroider, and on the table they end up on.

What We Make

What each piece is, what size it comes in, and how to choose between them.

Your Table

Wood, marble, glass. What each surface can take, and how to lay a table without covering it.

The Collections

Where each motif comes from, why we chose it, and what it means in the place it belongs to.

Caring for Linen

Washing, drying, the first two minutes of a stain, and what a coated finish actually does.

Hosting

Receiving people. The seasons, the kitchen island, and the hour before dinner.

Trunk Shows

Where to find us in person, and what linen turns out to be once you can pick it up.

Who We Are

Two people, a workshop in Italy, and the reason any of this exists. The flax, the embroidery, the hands and the machines, and where the name came from.

The Traditional Alpine Interior, the Way Cortina Actually Does It
Search for alpine chic and you get antlers and plaid. Then go to Cortina and look at the houses that actually work. They do the opposite, and always have.   Read more...
There Is No Such Thing as Italian Linen
More than half the Europeans surveyed thought linen was produced outside Europe. A third imagined Asia. It grows in a strip of land most of them could drive to.   Read more...
What Your Dining Table Can Actually Take
A dinner plate is warm. A serving dish from a 400°F oven is not in the same category. The gap between those two objects is where every damaged table comes... Read more...
A Sealed Marble Table Still Etches
Three weeks after the table arrives, a glass of lemonade leaves a dull ring. It is not a stain, it will not clean off, and the sealer did nothing to... Read more...
Take It Out While It Is Still Damp
Stiffness, shrinkage and creases no iron can remove: a surprising amount of it happens at the end of the drying cycle, once the cloth is already almost dry.   Read more...
The First Two Minutes
Hot water, chlorine bleach and rubbing ruin more linen than the spills that prompt them. What to do in the first two minutes, and what to reach for instead. Read more...
Four Inches Below the Knee
Before the 1930s nobody bought clothes for skiing. By the mid-1940s the trousers had changed shape for good. The window in between is what these two motifs are wearing. Read more...
The Rules That Kept the Valley Whole
In the fourteenth century the Regole closed whole forests to cutting and grazing for years at a time. The landscape that looks untouched is the result of decisions.   Read more...
Two Napkins, Two Finishes
A dinner napkin is in your lap within thirty seconds and nobody sees it flat again. A cocktail napkin lies flat under a glass for an hour. That is the... Read more...
The Moment Before It Moves
The reserve that saved the ibex paid a bounty for every fox killed. One of them needed a king and a century to come back. The other never left Read more...
Pre-Washed, Stone-Washed, Enzyme-Washed
Pre-washed, stone-washed, softened, garment-washed. These terms do not form one standard vocabulary, and two cloths carrying the same word can have been through very different things.   Read more...
Nothing to Hide Behind
In 2019 the European Commissioner confirmed that San Marzano tomatoes can legally be grown anywhere. What is protected is the name of a place, not the name of a tomato. Read more...