A string of a story

In the early 1900s: The writer H. Hesse in his "From Italy" tells us a story that took place right in our city: “When I arrived in Prato, (...) I first went to visit a friend of mine, who lived near the town hall. You know that Prato biscuits are famous! Well, my friend made just such cookies and was doing good business."

Architect Le Corbusier seemed to be overwhelmed by the confusion of the September fair; it was 1907 when he wrote to his parents: “Prato, city of biscuits; (...) the day I went there, there was not a square meter of street that was not occupied as a display case for biscuits, of all shapes, of all flavours, and undoubtedly also of different origins; it is appropriate to say that that certain day was exactly that of the annual festival."

The painter Ardengo Soffici, on the other hand, links the biscuits to a moment of his adolescence, in the late 1800s, when he was a guest at his aunts in Poggio a Caiano: "In order not to confuse us, they put the customary tin tray painted with flowers on the table, on the tray went a bottle of marsala or vinsanto and glasses for everyone, and the usual plate of biscuits from Mattonella, which were the famous Prato specialty."

But also D'annunzio, Malaparte, and others famous or not have all become our customers, some of them already knew us or knew about our products, others have become our ambassadors around the world, like the various industrialists from Prato who proudly took our products from the Antonio Mattei biscuit factory to their customers in various cities, in Italy as well as abroad. Our biscuits in the blue bag have travelled a lot, reaching unexpected places and people. An example?

Some time ago a customer brought to our attention a quote, taken from a book written by Yannick Haenel, Tien ferme ta Couronne, (2017), precisely because the author writes about Mattonella biscuits. "THE WORLD OR NOTHING", in the last chapter of the book (in the Italian edition p. 263-264), the author describes the last few hours spent with director Michael Cimino during their meeting in New York: "We arrived at Paesano, a restaurant which, according to Cimino, was the only one to offer true Italian cuisine and where the owner welcomed him with big hugs; (...) After dinner, he ordered some almond biscuits which we dipped in small glasses of vin santo. They were the biscuits of his childhood, crunchy and fragrant: the famous Mattonella Cantuccini from Prato. The owner gave me a bag for the trip, since he was pleased that someone could eat them in France. That evening the gesture of dipping such a biscuit seemed to me to have a sacramental value; and since Cimino ate with midnight blue silk gloves, the movements he made to dip the cantuccini in the sweet wine were similar to those of a magician who, putting his hand into a hat, pulled out flowers, satin ribbons, a spinning top, some jacks, a torrent of sparks; but during that evening the whole world had come out (...) and once all the biscuits had been nibbled, Michael Cimino ordered two glasses of Asti spumante, took off his black glasses for the first time, looked me straight in the eye, raised his glass high and, quoting the last verse of Dante's Divine Comedy, he made a toast to “the love that moves the sun and the other stars”.

Poetic right? We hope you are "inspired" in the same way... by eating our Biscuits!

Pics of Alessandro Moggi