Cooking with Mariaelisa and Friends

"Where there is no bread, there is no love."

--Italian proverb

Cookbooks are second only to travel guides when it comes to books that help you daydream your way to far-off lands. Although, since cookbooks help you recreate one of the best parts of any visit to another country -- the food -- maybe they are the best way to go on an imaginary vacation.

We recently received our latest shipment of woodblock-printed wonders from Mariaelisa Lebroni's Xilocart workshop in Perugia, Italy. Among the treasured greeting cards, journals, prints, and other goodies were copies of three cookbooks Mariaelisa published with writer friends of hers, one for breads, one for seeds and grains, and one about those plump garden favorites potato, tomato, and squash. Each of these cookbooks gives the history and traditions associated with these foods in Italy, and a cornucopia of recipes.

Mariaelisa's woodblock prints of farm scenes, rustic baker's ovens, and lucious plants decorate the pages, and the text for all three books is in both Italian and English. Talk about a way to travel without leaving the house, or even the kitchen!

A Cup of Wisdom

I have a memory from when I was young of my father Diarmid preparing coffee on the stovetop. Diarmid practiced Sufism, and as he boiled the Turkish grounds in a little metal pot, he sang the praises of the dark elixir, known for centuries as an aid to achieving mystical states.

My own personal voyages on coffee are a much more recent experience. Throughout college, I stayed away from caffeinated coffee, not pulling any all-nighters unless I was able to stay awake out of pure interest. (Okay, so I had a little tea now and then.) But on my recent trip to Italy, where espresso is a way of life and everyone was so hospitable to my family, I developed quite a taste for the stuff. So much so that the first thing I did when I came back to Castle in the Air was to install a little espresso maker for us. Now look at me -- I drink 3 coffees a day and am beginning to see what all the fuss was about, all those years ago.

Marbled Marvels

One of the most fun and educational experiences my children had in Italy was learning how to marble paper from our friends at Il Papiro, in Rome. We've been buying hand-marbled papers from them for years, so my girls had seen it before, but there's nothing like the chance to get one's feet wet, or hands in this case.

They took turns dripping paints into a tray lined with a layer of carrageenan sizing, then made patterns including peacock feathers and hearts by pulling fine combs and other tools through the floating paint. When the pattern was finished, they carefully laid a piece of paper in the tray and slowly dragged it out over the edge. The result? A beautiful piece of art! It was so sweet to watch the girls work, and the people at Il Papiro couldn't have been nicer.

A few weeks ago we posted photographs of some of the amazing marbled sheets to this weblog, and now they're all available through our Online Shoppe. Ever since our day with the marblers, I've been fascinated with the technique and want to experience it again. Is there a master marbler out there who could teach a class in this fabulous art at Castle in the Air?

Little Shops Make a Big Difference

One of the nicest surprises I had in Italy was to find so many similarities between the shops in the ancient towns we visited and the shops along Fourth Street in Berkeley, where Castle in the Air is. Of course, we don't have the luxury of being right down the street from the Pantheon like Natalizia's shop in Rome, pictured here. But philosophically and socially there is a lot to compare.

The Italian shops tended to be clustered together in warrens, shopping districts that were destinations in and of themselves. These parts of town had played host to merchants and buyers for centuries -- if the streets could talk, what stories they'd tell!

In a post like this about visiting shops in foreign countries, on a weblog that I use to promote my online store, it might sound odd for me to tout the virtues of shopping locally. But it's something that I sincerely believe in, and the afternoons spent in the little shops in Italy really drove it home for me. What struck me more than anything else was how vital the shops were to creating a sense of community in their neighborhoods, in their towns. Fourth Street is like that for those of us who work down here in Berkeley, and for our regular customers. After spending my childhood watching Fourth Street grow, and following years of running my store, getting lunch at the take-out place next door, buying treats for my dog across the street, and seeing all the other workers and customers day in and day out, Fourth Street is as much my home as anywhere else. I know it's that way for so many people in so many little districts around the world, and I believe it's something we all should cherish and support when we do our shopping.

Nella Vita...

Bellissima. Bellissima.

Although we only had one day in Perugia, Mariaelisa Lebroni helped my family feel like natives and royalty all at once when we went to visit her there. Mariaelisa is the woodblock artist behind the Xilocart line of books and prints we sell at Castle in the Air. She makes her creations out of her magical studio in Perugia, the capital of Italy's Umbria region and a city known for its artists.

Between feeding us so much delicious home-cooked food and introducing us to her family, Mariaelisa showed us her studio, where she's got the product of forty years of printing arranged among shelves, tables, and crates. She surprised and delighted me when, after showing us the blocks she used to print her own set of tarot cards, Mariaelisa handed me one of her few remaining copies of the deck!

She drove us all on a high-speed tour through the streets of the town, ending up outside the Church of San Pietro. The church was already closed, but Mariaelisa talked our way in. We were the only ones inside the nave, and when we looked up at the ceiling and took in the gorgeous inlaid wood ceiling, none of us summed it up like Mariaelisa: "Bellissima. Bellissima."

Strange and Wonderful Patterns

This week at Castle in the Air, we're swimming in new hand-printed and marbled papers from Italy. Ride our magic carpet to the phantasmagorical wonderland!

The Prints of Mariaelisa Lebroni

One of the most beloved collections we carry at Castle in the Air is the line of journals, albums, prints, and other beautiful objects from Italian artisan printmaker Mariaelisa Lebroni. Under the name Xilocart, Mariaelisa uses xilography (xilografia in Italian) printmaking tools and techniques that have been found in the artifacts of particular cultures reaching back across the millennia.

Xilography is a method of printing first employed by ancient Egyptians and later by the Chinese, who expanded from single block carving to moveable type as early as the 8th century, 700 years before Europeans began using similar techniques. Artists carve away parts from the surface of a block of wood, leaving intact the shapes they would like printed. Ink is applied to the carved surface, which is then pressed onto paper or cloth. A xilographic artist may print using a single impression, or let the first impression dry and add others using different blocks or colors of ink.

Perhaps more than for the sense of history conveyed by Mariaelisa's books, people love her work for its whimsy. Contented frogs, cheerful cityscapes, smiling suns, and simple pictures of trees in autumn grace the covers of her books, all in lovely color combinations. Because each print is handmade and one-of-a-kind, no two books will have exactly the same image, although it is easy to recognize pieces from the same "family."

Mariaelisa is truly a treasure for the beauty of her works and for her preservation of an ancient art form, and we are honored to know her and carry her books and prints.