madia abruzzese

[adriatica]

these things are becoming more and more popular always to be found in any decent Abruzzo kitchen...

worth while i would say if you have found an old property you like and are doing a deal that when the money negotiations have ground to a stop...and you have finally agreed a price... to make it the clincher...ie ok will give you that much if you leave that piece of furniture...

its one of those country home bread and flour store things... with a top that opens to reveal a chest , and then draws and cupboards below...of course there are varieties on the theme and different regional stiles of the thing ... basically i guess you could call it a larder... if you remember a posting about the Teramo dish, Le Virtù teramane, on the first of may each year... its produced in the past that is from the contents left in the madia after the winter finishes and its the sort of spring clean dish of this piece of furniture...

price wise they seem to have gone up...from the euro 100 mark...for a scrappy one... to now in some of the more refined second hand furniture places to around the euro 900...or more and they are getting more difficult to find.. original ones that is..

we have a decent furniture place in a village called Torricella Sicura...he restores period furniture... a pretty decent carpenter i would say.. next door to the Simpsons bar... he turns them into storage cupboards more adaptable to modern life...ie wine racks instead of flour ... in fact he will build you one.. but the older ones have those quirks of time ingrained that make them special ...

[Gala Placidia]

I guess that this is the sort of piece of kitchen or pantry furniture you are talking about:

madia antica

I think that in many European kitchens there used to be similar pieces. At least in regions of Spain and France I have seen pieces that look alike. They are highly priced by antique and vintage dealers, well... I don't know how much they paid to the original owners, but they could sell them for more than 1,000 euros.