Anichini
Vintage Italian tablecloth from the founder’s collection: How it all began, and the canvas upon which every artistic meal is painted.
Susan Dollenmaier, founder of Anichini, loves staging beautiful meals for friends and family.
Long before there was Anichini, the 40-yearold international luxury textile brand headquartered in Vermont, there was Susan Dollenmaier, its founder. An exquisite cook, with an innate sense of design (further honed during her time studying under Buckminster Fuller in her native Illinois), she loved, first and still, cooking and staging beautiful meals for friends and family. This obsession with vintage Italian table linens—and the search in her 20s for “The Genuine Article”—gained her entrée into small, generationally owned mills as she traveled throughout Italy. A local commercial garment factory’s closing provided trained stitchers for the workroom in Tunbridge (still the company’s headquarters). This meant she could turn these gorgeous textiles into one-of- a-kind, soft home furnishings. The only luxury textile company headquartered in the United States, Susan still has the ability (and flexibility) to reimagine, reinvent, and continue to source and design the finest fabrics and items from around the world. Tabletop remains her personal passion.
Now, four-plus decades later, Susan looks astonishingly the same. The thick mane of dark hair has just a few silver threads woven through, the beatific smile is identical, and in her eyes the same gleam of delight, discernment, humor, and joy. All of which are reflected in her newest collections.
Anichini table linens have been used in scores of luxury hotels worldwide. Twin Farms, a Relais & Châteaux all-inclusive property in nearby Barnard, has been using Anichini table and bed linens since they began operations 30 years ago. They consistently rank among Forbes “Best Hotels in the World” lists. More important, Anichini products also become treasured family heirlooms. Not just for special occasions, the quality and thread-dyed woven nature of these exquisite tablecloths, runners, placemats, and napkins make them ideal for daily use. Truly beautiful workhorses of durability.
Now, in addition to the signature cotton jacquards still woven in a small mill in Como, Italy, Anichini has linens from Lithuania, Portugal, and Spain. Of most importance to Susan, when selecting mills and products, is the “story behind the story” in the manufacture of these items.
A couple stopping in remarked that the sheets for their Lake Como house are, in fact, from the collection woven outside Como!
Turkish Tabletop Delight (Anichini's Gulistani Tapestry paired with their Persia red napkins
At the Anichini 802 store in Quechee, you’ll find local pottery and other unique pieces to create the perfect Anichini table.
At Susan’s right hand is the head of the company’s creative department, and a 30-year employee, Alan Jesseman. He is a Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) graduate. Together they create new iterations of signature Anichini fabrics. This in itself is a wonderful process to witness. For example, a recent new colorway of the classic Persia collection took a full year to get just right, with samples sent back and forth to the mill in Italy. The result is one of the fastest selling colors in Anichini history.
They often conduct meetings in the Vermont store in Quechee. This 4,000-square-foot space is truly a labor of love. Susan created it slowly during a three-year span with meticulous attention to detail, including repurposed barn beams, artfully chosen full-spectrum paints, carefully curated antique pieces, and stacks of the gorgeous fabrics and products for which her company is renown worldwide.
She has filled Anichini 802, as the Quechee store is called, with products not found on the company’s website. These treasures are snapped up quickly by longtime Anichini fans who make the pilgrimage to the store on Route 4, or by folks stopping in and discovering the brand for the first time.
Now Anichini’s only brick-and-mortar store, it is a beautiful space. The store manager, Nawal Lamgari, has been with the company for 23 years. She has a fantastic merchandising and design sense, and has gathered many loyal customers during the years who turn to her expertise when adding to their linen closet.
The store’s proximity to other not-to-be-missed Vermont attractions is definitely a plus. Many people who’ve purchased Anichini for years pull in asking, “What’s my luxury Italian sheeting company doing in Vermont?!”, not realizing they’ve been here all along….
A couple stopping in remarked that the sheets for their Lake Como house are, in fact, from the collection woven outside Como! That fabric came in bolts across the Atlantic, was made into their sheets, and shipped back the way they came. Well-traveled bed linens indeed.
Anichini and Susan Dollenmaier’s love of tabletop have come full circle and will continue on through the generations. She now hosts tea parties with her 3-year-old granddaughter, Esme, on a small, wrought iron table set with Anichini of course. The spitting image of her grandmother and already showing signs of being the next great lover of authentic beauty.
