Anghiari, Tuscany, Italy · Est. 1842 (family in Anghiari since 1755) · Founded by The Busatti-Sassolini family (eighth generation, currently led by Giovanni Sassolini Busatti)
In 1797, Napoleon's soldiers occupied the Busatti family palazzo in Anghiari -- a hilltown in the heart of Tuscany, equidistant from Rome and Florence -- and set up a wool mill in the basement to weave uniforms for the invading army. When they left, they abandoned the machinery. The Busattis kept it. Eight generations later, the family is still weaving in that same palazzo, using natural fibers and Renaissance-inspired patterns, on looms that have run continuously since 1842. There is nothing else quite like it.
The Busatti family arrived in Anghiari in 1755, drawn by the fertile Tiber Valley that the Grand Dukes of Tuscany had opened to new settlers. They became merchants, then textile traders, then something no one could have predicted: accidental weavers. In 1797, Napoleon's soldiers swept through the region and commandeered Palazzo Morgalanti -- the Busatti family home -- converting the basement into a wool mill to produce uniforms and blankets for the French army. When the occupation ended and the soldiers departed, they left the machinery behind. The Busattis looked at what remained and made a decision that would define the next nine generations of their family.
Mario Busatti formally established the weaving mill in 1842, adding eight wooden looms and a warping machine, hiring ten weavers, and beginning the work that has never stopped since. Today the shuttle looms -- some from the early 20th century, still original -- run in the same basement, weaving natural fibers into table linens, bed linens, kitchen textiles, and bath pieces with motifs drawn from the Renaissance that surrounds them. Certified European flax. Thread-dyed yarn, which means the color runs through every fiber rather than sitting on the surface. Hand-finished by artisans who have inherited the knowledge from the generation before them. Every stage of production happens in Italy -- from dyeing to spinning to weaving to finishing -- in a region that has understood beauty as a civic responsibility since the 14th century.
The Financial Times called their story "the secret behind successful succession" in 2020. They have stores on all five continents. On a registry, a piece of Busatti linen is not just a tablecloth or a set of napkins. It is two hundred years of uninterrupted craft, woven in a Tuscan palazzo where Napoleon once slept.
