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Building your Linen Gondola

Shaping a gondola from a damask table napkin is almost a lost art! But it is an ideal showpiece for putting under other serving dishes.

1. You will need a large square damask or linen napkin. Using a sheet of aluminium foil (this helps keep the shape) place on top of napkin. (Napkin should be wrong side up at this stage.) See Figure 1.
   
   
2. Fold all corners to centre - Figure 2 - and just two corners as in Figure 3.
   
   
3. Figure 4 shows the next fiddly step of taking only smaller diagonal folds and then fold whole 'gondola' in half as in Figure 5.
   
   
4. In order to achieve the right result you now need to lay the 'gondola' on one half of a clean teatowel and folder over as in Figure 6.
   
   
5. This will enable you to be able to pull the gondola into shape. To do this you simply place a heavy board or book on the fold of the gondola (which is, of course, between the teatowel and, holding the board down with one hand, pull and tug on the teatowel towards you to shape the gondola ends as in Figure 7.