Who isn’t impressed by those posh restaurants, where the napkins are teased and folded and coaxed into all kinds of wonderful designs, like orchids and swans? But, equally, who could have imagined that you could fashion a whole career from it?

Apart from Luigi, obviously, who embarked upon his unique journey after deciding that the captain’s table on the P&O ship he was waiting on really could do with livening up.

“The way they lay a table with the knives and forks has been the same for 500 years,” he says, his accent still bearing the inflection of his native Venice.

“It will never change but I realised the one thing you could change was the way the napkin looked, so every day I re-folded it to a different shape, to make the table look more welcoming.”

His inventiveness and attention to detail sparked a life-long career in the hospitality industry, on board cruise liners and in the UK, working with the Roux brothers and in various upmarket London establishments.

“I settled here because my wife is British but Italy never left me, it’s always in my heart,” he says.

They moved to this area from Harrow in London last year and already the kitchen and conservatory workshop are festooned with Luigi’s incredible designs.

Here is a heart for Valentine’s Day, here, the Sydney Opera House, here are two elf shoes: “Very suitable for a baby’s Christening,” he says.

Bournemouth Echo:

In all he has devised more than 650 folds to cover every eventuality a human could face, from a gay wedding to the coronation of a new monarch, and they are all meticulously described in his book ‘Luigi’s Language of Napkin Folding’.

Within a few minutes of him starting to describe and show me his samples – all neatly preserved in a small chest of drawers - my head is whirling.

“This is a gondola; this is going to be a swan,” he declares, liberating a giant white form from the tin-foil in which he preserves them: “Never prepare them with cling film because it sweats, they all are more floppy so you need tin-foil,” he says.

He has an ironing board permanently at the ready “Only iron a starched napkin after the spray starch has dried,” he warns.

“Otherwise it can leave a mark.”

How many napkins has he ironed in his life?

“Hundreds of thousands,” he smiles.

Bournemouth Echo:

He shows me the designs he’s created to celebrate the royal weddings of Prince Edward and Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles and Prince William. He’s created designs for the Queen’s Golden and Diamond jubilees and proudly shows me the letters he’s received from Buckingham Palace to thank him for his creations, but he won’t let on whether the designs have appeared officially on the royal table. Judging by his smile, I rather think they have!

His proudest design is the one he created for his countryman, Luciano Pavarotti.

“I designed it to pop over a glass,” he says, holding up an exquisite design that looks exactly like the Maestro’s distinctive operatic jacket and shirt.

“He loved the way I had added a handkerchief and wanted me to make 200 for him for a farewell dinner he was holding at the Dorchester but he sadly died before he could hold it,” says Luigi.

Bournemouth Echo:

The Pavarotti is a beast of a design but I am absolutely gobsmacked when Luigi starts showing me how to fold it, making sure I get my corners right and put in the special roll fold at the top. By the time I’ve finished I’ve created the basis of it, which he calls ‘The dinner jacket’ and it looks amazing, even though I say so myself.

I triumph, too, as Luigi shows me the Bird of Paradise.

“You have the four points, towards you, you take the fourth point to make it into a triangle then you take this point in there and that one to come over,” he says.

We fold and tuck and pleat and at the end – ta-dah! – it actually works.

Then we attempt: “The easiest one of all,” the Royal Orchid.

Which could be renamed ‘Faith’s Waterloo’. Suddenly it all goes Pete Tong. I can’t seem to understand the instructions and my tucking is all over the shop.

Luigi is deeply concerned and not just for bozos like me. He’s so dedicated to his art that he even runs a helpline for napkin-folders who are getting into a bit of a flap, they can ring up and he’ll soothe their folding fears away.

What he really wants, he tells me, is a new publicist and someone he can train up and pass all this amazing knowledge on to. Otherwise, he fears, everything he knows could go.

I know that person won’t be me but I hope he finds someone – even as I prepare to leave he is chatting to me about new designs he’s thought of.

“I never stop,” he says.

  • luigisnapkins.com