FLORIN WEBSITE © JULIA BOLTON HOLLOWAY, AUREO ANELLO ASSOCIAZIONE, 1997-20242: MEDIEVAL: BRUNETTO LATINO, DANTE ALIGHIERI, SWEET NEW STYLE: BRUNETTO LATINO, DANTE ALIGHIERI, & GEOFFREY CHAUCER || VICTORIAN: WHITE SILENCE: FLORENCE'S 'ENGLISH' CEMETERY || ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING || WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR || FRANCES TROLLOPE || ABOLITION OF SLAVERY || FLORENCE IN SEPIA  || CITY AND BOOK CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII || MEDIATHECA 'FIORETTA MAZZEI' || EDITRICE AUREO ANELLO CATALOGUE || UMILTA WEBSITE || LINGUE/LANGUAGES: ITALIANO, ENGLISH || VITA
New: Dante vivo || White Silence



HANDCRAFTS IN OUR MEDIATHECA 'FIORETTA MAZZEI'



Concerned about the loss of handcrafts in Florence (the children no longer wanting to learn their crafts from their parents' ancestral knowledge and seeing that rents and taxes were too high for them to be able to continue), we set about creating a centre where we shared and produced together, combining skills and learning, especially with impoverished immigrants, first Albanians, also Italian artists, then Roma families, even a mother in Kenya, and Australian and American art students and Florentine children help us marble paper. We cannot sell objects, only offer them for a donation for the library, our Mediatheca 'Fioretta Mazzei', where international scholars carry out research and where adult Roma (European citizens) learn the alphabet.



DANIEL-CLAUDIU DUMITRESCU

BODLEIAN LIBRARY LILY CROSSES
 

  

Daniel-Claudiu Dumitrescu is our expert restorer for the 'English' Cemetery, graduate of technical school, grandson of the top coppersmith of his part of Romania and who has inherited his tools. He also builds libraries, as for the Libreria Editrice Fiorentina in the Palazzo Pucci in via dei Pucci. See http://www.florin.ms/cradle.html. We adapted this design from those in the Bodleian Library.

  

 

MARIA KULLA

HANDSEWING
 

Maria Kulla, an Albanian mother in Florence, Italy, with two daughters to school and support, made lavendar sachets and handbags large enough for books of cotton chintz in eighteenth-century designs. She embroidered and crochetted. Now it is our Roma mothers and fathers who sew lavendar sachets from the lavendar they garden and harvest in the cemetery.

Contact Julia Bolton Holloway for sales which will directly benefit Maria and her children in Florence. No longer available.
 

BRUNO VIVOLI

PRINTS OF ENGRAVINGS

This print of an engraving made of the Giotto Badia Madonna, of a numbered signed series of less than 50, is available. Framing is extra, but which can be done on the premises of our Bottega.

Other prints are available: Maternity; Giotto's Christ; Ponte Vecchio; Tuscan Townscape; Crowned Christ; Dante Teaching the Commedia to Florence. See Bruno Vivoli. He studied engraving in school in Florence at 15. He is interested in teaching others his skill. 

Contact Julia Bolton Holloway
 

ALICE WEITHERA

ROSARIES
 

Alice Weithera in Nairobi, Kenya, with a family to support, lived in a relocated slum where water has to be carried great distances. She made fine hand-crafted Rosaries, the crosses carved from horn, the beads using seeds as well as coloured glass. 

Contact Julia Bolton Holloway for sales which will directly benefit Alice and her children in Nairobi. No longer available.
 
 

JULIA BOLTON HOLLOWAY

THE CARDINAL BESSARIONE FRESCO
 

First copied in 1960 when I was in my twenties, this design, frescoed in the Roman house of the Cardinal Bessarione, conveys the learning and ecumenism of the great Byzantine scholar who brought Greek manuscripts into the Latin West, ushering in the Renaissance. Painted in water colours and framed in gold.

Contact Julia Bolton Holloway for purchase to benefit the Mediatheca Fioretta Mazzei.

I also typeset, bind in marbled paper, and repair books.

       

We have rocking cradles that Daniel-Claudiu Dumitrescu and Vandana Culea and others have made using this design, for which see the web essay on building libraries and cradles:

   

This couple also write and illustrate booklets they create such as http://www.ringofgold.eu/Romany.html in four languages for use in teaching children and others to share cultures.

We have marbled paper for purchase to similarly benefit the library.


VANDANA CULEA

ROMANY BOXES

 

I learned how to make these from a Swedish friend, who learned how to make them from a Roma in Sweden. I now teach Roma from Romania how to make them. Who can make them as small as a thunbnail or larger. They are useful for handmade jewelry, lavender and rose petals, etc. They are especially lovely if made with marbled paper. Which we also make ourselves.

I. Take two squares of paper.

Fold them from corner to opposite corner,

Then turn the corners to the center, color side outside.

 

 

 

II. Now fold along two sides to the middle.

 

 

 

 Next do the other sides the same way.

 

III. Open out and cut at right angles along the first fold to the other first fold line on all four sides.

 

 

 IV. Take these cut pieces and fold them over onto each other for making the box sides.

 

 

 Now turn these flaps the other way to lock the box sides by placing the kite folds over them.

 

 V. Now ease one of the two boxes inside the other.

If you would like to order these, please send an e-mail and we will send you a package of boxes nested inside boxes for your use or sale on receipt of a donation to PayPal. Their proceeds would go for Romanian Roma's children's education as they have to pay for their schooling (it is meant to be free but each child must pay 200 euro for the year for heating, books, etc., and these families are too poor for such sums, meaning widespread illiteracy along with their poverty).



FLORIN WEBSITE © JULIA BOLTON HOLLOWAY, AUREO ANELLO ASSOCIAZIONE, 1997-2024: MEDIEVAL: BRUNETTO LATINO, DANTE ALIGHIERI, SWEET NEW STYLE: BRUNETTO LATINO, DANTE ALIGHIERI, & GEOFFREY CHAUCER || VICTORIAN: WHITE SILENCE: FLORENCE'S 'ENGLISH' CEMETERY || ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING || WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR || FRANCES TROLLOPE || ABOLITION OF SLAVERY || FLORENCE IN SEPIA  || CITY AND BOOK CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII || MEDIATHECA 'FIORETTA MAZZEI' || EDITRICE AUREO ANELLO CATALOGUE || UMILTA WEBSITE || LINGUE/LANGUAGES: ITALIANO, ENGLISH || VITA
New: Dante vivo || White Silence





To donate to the restoration by Roma of Florence's formerly abandoned English Cemetery and to its Library click on our Aureo Anello Associazione's PayPal button: 
                THANKYOU!