Italian textiles

INTRODUCTI
ON
● The Italian word for silk is seta.
● Italy is known for fine silk.
● While Italy has long produced its silk from the
threads of locally maintained silk worms, the
laborious process of gathering and weaving
the silk thread has left little profit margin.
● Italy has few silkworms left.
● However Italian silk is still considered as one of
the most luxurious silk in the world.
 HISTORY AND EVOLUTION
● Silk industry developed in Europe in 12th century.
● Italy became one of the most important centers for manufacturing silk,
with Genoa, Venice and Florence as the main production areas.
● In the year 1510, Pietro Boldoni of Bellano was the first to establish the
silk industry in Como, Italy.
● Como in the north of Italy provided the ideal environment to produce
silk, due to its abundance of mulberry trees and crystal clear waters.
● After the unification of Italy in 1866, the development of the industry in
the area surged. A technical institute to train young professionals in the
craft of silk manufacturing was established.
● The silk industry kept flourishing, especially after the second world war.
● In the 1990s, Como was the most important center for silk manufacturing
in the world, with all the important fashion houses and major apparel
manufacturers ordering silk from the region around Lake Como.
● From the last two decades, the cost of silk produced entirely in Como
was considerably higher than that which was mass-produced in the
ultra-industrialized regions of China. This eventually led to the closing
down of most factories in Como.
In the late Middle Ages the prestige cloths most highly prized tended to be Italian figured silks
–
● Lampasas - Luxury fabric with a background weft as a ground weave and supplementary wefts
and pattern wefts laid on top and forming a design.
● Damasks - These are woven with one warp yarn and one weft yarn, usually with the pattern in
warp-faced satin weave and the ground in weft-faced or sateen weave.
● Velvets - A dense pile in which the cut fibers are evenly distributed.

Damask
Lampas
Velvet
MATERIAL

SILK THREAD

Rods for making velvet

METAL THREAD
Silver thread
Golden thread

DYE

One of the looms which is

mention is TREADLE LOOM.
 COLOUR
● Crimson red shades were popular, followed by bright green and sapphire blue.

● Black and white velvet garments were fashionable, particularly in the fifteenth
century. Only rare fragments of these fabrics survive, as the processes used to
obtain deep black and bright white were corrosive to the silk fibres.

● All textile dye colours were derived from plants, minerals, or insects. The quality of
the dyes used for the threads was so important. Merchants searched the globe for
the most brilliant shades and were willing to pay a premium for reliable dyestuffs,
which did not fade with time and exposure to light.

● The device of chiaroscuro(an effect of contrasted light and shadow) and

juxtaposition(the fact of two things being seen or placed close together with
contrasting effect.) of complementary colours (green/red, bright yellow/blue,
purple/gold) heightened the contrast between background and motif.

● By the middle of the seventeenth-century damask created a dynamic play of light

on the background surface. Dyestuffs were mixed into a new colour palette-
salmon pink, lime green, lemon yellow turquoise blue. Meanwhile in the seventeenth-
century sombre group of shades(dark red, dark brown, dark green, black and grey)
were also seen.
FEATURES

● Symmetrical
● Geometrical
● Optimum Utilization of space
● Panel Design
● Narrative Designs
● Simplification of form with
intricate ornamentation

Silk Velvet, Florence ,

Italy, 15th Century
Italian 17th
Century Silk
Velvet Cope with
Wife of Duke of Tuscany
French 15th Italian Velvet, 16th century
Century Orphrey

Chasuble, Italian Velvet

Hanging of velvet,late Silk Brocade, Venice, Italy, 15th
15th–mid-16th century Panel of velvet,second
Century
half 15th century, Italy
MOTIFS AND
PATTERNS
13th AND 14th CENTURY
● During late 13th and 14th centuries, animals and birds
flanking stylized plant motif were done.
● Oriental motifs
- They came during early 14th century when the silk was
imported from China and central Asia.
- Characterised by grid, large designs and natural
elements.
● Vines and animals motifs
- During late 13th century, vine designs and animal
designs were incorporated together.
● Human figures
- During 2nd half of 14th century, hunters and
huntresses and scenes of palace courts were
developed.
 15TH CENTURY

● While renaissance flourished, the rich liked

boasting their wealth, and they did it by
widening the patterns of their textiles, too,
or by putting gold and silver threads in
them.
● Pomegranate motif
- During 15th century, The most popular one
was the “pomegranate” pattern.
- It doesn’t show just this fruit, but rather
pine cones and lotus or thistle flowers, too.
● Griccia motifs
- The “griccia” motif is a pattern arranged
vertically, with a sinuous trunk surrounded
by leaves, most of all acanthus leaves, pine
cones and lotus.
● Cammino motifs
- It came during early 15th to mid 16th
century.
- The “cammino” motif has a horizontal
arrangement, instead, and is
characterised by corollas with a varied
number of lobes, containing
pomegranates, pine cones or thistles,
set horizontally.

● Inferriata motifs
- The “inferriata” (or voided) pattern,
whose corollas are rendered with thin
outlines and are empty, apart from the
pomegranate or flower in the middle of
them.
- The velvet has corollas with central
pomegranates in bloom, and between
each other there’s a pine cone.
 16th TO 18th CENTURY

● The ogee lattice

- The ogee lattice is the principal design
composition of the 16th century.
- The pomegranate was framed by the
branches forming an ogee.
- Little floral motifs, increasingly geometric,
were produced.
● Vase motif
- Thristle flower, pine-cone, pomegranate, rising
out of a central vase motif was added.
● During 17th century, woven flowers became
more realistic enhancing the baroque style.
● Peony and chrysanthemum with much more
stems and leaves was incorporated.
 FORTUNY
● 1871- Mariano Fortuny is born into a renowned family
of artists in Granada, Spain.
● 1889- Fortuny’s mother, Doña Cecilia, moves the
family to Venice.
● He was as a painter; turned into etching, sculpture,
photography, lighting design, theatre direction, set
design, architecture, and costume design, and
ultimately the creator of extraordinary fabrics and
garments.
● His first theatrical costume was a figure-enveloping,
border-printed scarf, titled the Knossos.
● His knowledge in painting allowed him to experiment
with subtle colors creating one-of-a-kind silks and
velvets from which he made exquisite gowns. The
velvet he used in dresses, jackets, capes, and cloaks
to cover his trademark “Delphos” gown; as well as
home furnishings.
● Mario Fortuny's elegance, simplicity and passion in
his fashion design has made his clothes timeless
works of art. Mariano Fortuny died in Venice on May
2, 1949.

Fortuny at the Hermitage Museum
DECEMBER 7, 2016
Sectile 1729 is a collection inspired
Delphos Gowns at the by the Gesuiti Church in Venice,
Ephemeral Museum of known for its elaborate marble,
Fashion, Florence sculpted and inlaid to look like
draped fabric.
TIEPOLO BALL

Fortuny fabrics grace

the tables at Dior’s
Tiepolo Ball for
Venetian Heritage,
setting the mood for 11
themed rooms in an
extravagant feast of
design.
Recent Collaboration

Rick Owens FW19

 ETRO’S ITALIAN SILK COLLECTION

● Etro’s autumn/winter 2014 collection was

inspired from italian silk textile.
● Dresses here had the feeling of an exquisite
vintage. Etro had successfully mixed rich,
gold silk velvet fabrics with heavy tweeds
and wools in a northern oriental way.
 VERSACE
BAROQUE
INSPIRED
COLLECTION
Founded in 1978 by the late Gianni Versace, the
label's bold, baroque-style prints represented
a flashy lifestyle. In 2012 fall winter collection,
Milan-based Gianni Versace turned the Italian
artistic tradition into wild pop art, replacing
the angels and cherubs of Italian frescos with
gold chains, Medusa heads and leopard skins
printed on shiny silk.
INNOVATION-
Not many people are aware of the cruelty of silk - an industry which intensively
farms silkworms in their thousands and sometimes boils them alive in their
cocoons to extract the yarns that will be used to create the silk fabric. To stop
this cruelty Italian brand Orange Fiber has harnessed the lightweight and
versatile qualities of citrus fibres of orange fruit to create a sustainable vegan
silk material.The fibers used by the brand are harvested from leftover fibers
from orange juice production, upcycling potential waste materials that otherwise
would have been discarded.Every year, 700,000 tonnes of citrus fruits are
harvested in Italy, and the brand has patented a technology that extracts
cellulose from the leftovers that remain after the fruits are juiced.The cellulose
can then be transformed into a soft, luxurious silk-like fabric.

In 2016, the brand was awarded H&M's Global Change Award, while last year it
was selected for the Good-Plug and Play Accelerator, which allowed the
founders to be mentored by brands such as Adidas, Zalando, Target and Kering.
 CONCLUSION

Today most of the raw material, the natural grey silk yarn, is
imported from the Far East and the manufacturers in Como handle
exclusively the final stages of the cycle, the dyeing and finishing of
the silk. Although the initial stages of the silk production have gone
elsewhere, you will still find some of the finest finished silk cloth in
the world produced in the region of Como.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY
● The silk roads to italy /
italiantribune.com
● ‘Luxury of silk woven in Italy to return
after decades-long absence’ A blog by
Alice Philipson.
● THE MET /
metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/
229157
● https://www.luigi-bevilacqua.com/en/re
naissance-fabrics-patterns/
● https://www.synzenbe.com/blog/italy-s-
etro-paisley-print-fabric-inspiration-fro
m-the-silk-road/346?utm_source=lesou
k