I was just in Venice and as any of you who have visited know, you are truly enveloped by the architecture when you are there. It happens in a natural way that is unique to this city, due to the scale (small, close up, the "streets" are so narrow) and way of traveling (slowly, by foot or boat). The labyrinth of passageways...

...between the unbelievably gorgeous old buildings becomes your world and unlike most cities, where the scale is grand, it's the small design details of Venice that are what come in to focus.

As I traveled through the streets, I took a series of photos of these details, the small things that give the architecture of Venice an undeniable specialness. The style is ornate, but not sedate, a bit decadent and just elegantly decayed enough to remind you of just how timeless this place truly is.

First up, the mailboxes! Normally a fairly mundane, totally ulititarian feature of a home, the place where the delivery person leaves your mail becomes an exercise in style on Venetian facades. From the clearly old ones set in wooden doors to the more current stone style, these ten show off the just one unique feature of Venice-style. These are the small bits of daily life that immediately begin to stand out, especially to the eyes of a tourist that are used to all things plastic and temporary - the design details of Venice are most definitely NOT disposable, and therefore, are beautiful. Puts the chunky goldtone metal mailbox in our common area hallway to shame!

I traveled to Venice as part of a trip to find out about the production of SFERRA linens, the luxury bedding brand about to celebrate their 120th anniversary. More posts to follow from the Italian adventure!

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