As you gaze into your phone, tap, tap, tapping out five emails and three texts in the space between of four subway stops, you find yourself longing for simpler, less deliriously-paced times.
When an afternoon could be spent composing the perfect come-for-tea invitation and an innuendo-laced oh-how-delightful riposte. A time when your chateau was your castle and there was nothing that your palazzo's majordomo couldn't fix with brisk and invisible efficiency.
Let's just ignore the painful reality check that you never had a chateau nor a palazzo (to say nothing for that sweet, sweet majordomo). All it will take is a few ridiculously ostentatious and fanciful objets scattered around your house (apartment, studio, shack, whatever), for you pretend that you do.
Courtesy of Santa Maria Novella
Burning Papers
Nevermind candles. You perfume your boudoir by burning exquisite Carta d'Armenia, paper infused with spices and resins, paper made by diligent monastics a Santa Maria Novella, Renaissance Italy pharmacy.
Enhance your bathing ritual with lavender-infused Dead Sea salts (you are such a traveler!) packed in a gold-embellished box (you have so many treasures to stash).
When you beckon your secret lover for love in the afternoon, you want to keep the initation away from prying eyes. And make that request official, with the embossed and personalized letter that will, ahem, seal the deal.
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