Siena - Palio costumes

Many people flock to Siena, Italy for the Palio horseraces each year. There is one on the 2nd of July and one on the 16th of August. The prize for winning is the Palio itself which is a painted banner. The right to parade the streets with this banner is the most coveted honour in the city. There is great excitement which builds all year long for these events and periodically throughout the streets of this walled city, you can observe boys in medieval-style costumes from the different Contradas parade, playing the drums and throwing flags in the air. Siena is composed of 17 Contradas [districts].


The costumes are very colourful and most have some kind of needlework on them. It is difficult to see this as the boys parade by and you can never stop them in their march so the only option for you is to go to the Contrada Museums. Each Contrada has it's own museum located within its district. They have strange hours and you are well advised to make an appointment to go through but it is worth the effort if you are into clothing or embroidery.


There are several key positions for parading and each position has its own Palio Costume. The alfieri [standard bearers] and the tamburini [drummer boys] are the ones you will notice the most as they are usually the ones in leading positions. The blue outfits seen here are from the Nicchio [Shell] Contrada and are modeled after designs made in 1928 by Umberto Giunti. The fabric is blue silk velvet lined with red silk satin, quilted in rows on the lower body. The tops of the sleeves, neckline, along the sleeve openings and above the hemline are all embroidered with gold thread. The crest is applied and was done in silk shading embroidery with silk threads on silk fabric.

There is a complex set of rules about who can parade when and where but you should be able to see at least one parade on these dates:
December 1
February 12
April 25
May 29
June 2, 23, 29
July 1, 2, 3
August 5, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17
September 22
There are many other times that they will parade to mark different events in the city but the dates above are always fixed.

Of course, if you attend one of the two Palio races themselves, then you will see many different styles of costumes as there will be other positions represented and they all parade around the Piazza del Campo in the hours before the race. There are some tens of thousands of people crowded into the square however and you may not be able to see that much, this is why a trip to the Contrada Museums is such a good opportunity.

( photos were taken by Rachel and NOT by her mother. :-D )

Punto Antico - Antique Stitch

I absolutely love this technique so you will probably read a lot about it here. Known under many names, Punto Toscano, Punto Reale, Punto Riccio and others, the term Punto Antico seems to be a relatively recent (early 20th century) name used to encompass needlework that uses the basic elements of this technique: Satin Stitch motifs, Curl Stitch curlicues, Overcast Stitch for bordering Openwork and Drawn-Thread work areas, Four-Sided Stitch, and very often Gigliuccio hemstitching. It is often paired with Reticello, Aemilia Ars and Punto in Aria needle laces.

Today it is largely done as a Counted Thread Technique but in the past (as even now) some do it as a classic embroidery technique, that is with traced designs on the fabric to be executed not by counting ground threads.

Going through the museums all over Italy I found extant pieces of this technique dating back quite far. There are pieces of fabric with Punto Antico elements on them dating back to the late 15th century. The pieces are quite complex suggesting that the technique goes much farther back in time.

This is some work at the Collezioni Comunali d'Arte in Bologna:


Ancient pieces have almost the whole surface of the fabric covered in stitching while modern pieces are quite sparse in comparison though done with no less good taste. I like the texture, the bas-relief effect, it seems to me like carved marble. The openwork spaces balance the textured areas using chiaroscuro effects so that this mainly monotone embroidery does not suffer in the least for lack of colour. The curlicues are my favourite element.

Another piece from the Collezioni Comunali d'Arte in Bologna:


This is some work exhibited at the Palazzo Davanzati in Florence:


As with any embroidery technique, there are a number of ways to execute the stitches. Taking the curlicue (Punto Riccio) as an example: it is executed in three parts with a base of Double Running Stitch (or Stem Stitch or Cable Stitch or Back Stitch) which are then whipped with an Overcast Stitch for each base stitch and then the whole line is covered in Overcast Stitches done side-by-side to create a wonderful raised stitch. Time consuming? Yes! Worth the effort? Very much so! It takes a bit of practice..


My first ones were quite lumpy but after many attempts, they are pretty smooth now...


Here's what they look like over Stem Stitch with only one Overcast Stitch per Stem Stitch (overcast the overlap) ... This gives quite a different effect which is nice too.


Anyway, its a fun stitch to play around with, giving your work some texture.

There are some Punto Antico online tutorials at Tuttoricamo under the "How it's Done" section (Antique Stitch). While you're there you can download some old books on the subject from the "Books" section: look under 'downloadable Antique books' - L. Vannini, there are three there.

I did a couple of articles for Piecework which are available for download from their website.

For some modern books:

Associazione Il Punto Antico (all books are either in Italian/English or come with English inserts upon request).

Tombolo Disegni (click "books", "libri ricamo", "ricamo italiani" - you need to send an email request to order) There you will also find a book called Punto Antico disegnato which is not a counted thread technique book but rather designs for traditional freestyle or non-counted thread, Punto Antico embroidery.

Most of the Carmela Testa books at Iva Rose also have some elements of Punto Antico in them though the instructions are a bit vague.

Check out YouTube as there are some tutorial films there too!

Maintenance... and Mantua

Sorry folks, it looks like there has been a lot of activity here today, but it was just me doing some maintenance. I was trying to consolidate and streamline the labels for each post. I'm not happy that there is a limit of how many labels you can list for each post... I had hoped to use the labels as a quick reference on the homepage, and I still will do that but it will be incomplete as sadly sometimes I have talked about too many different things in one post. I will try to make that more comprehensive from now on.

If you happen to be in Italy before the end of June and you are interested in Renaissance tapestries, you really should go to Mantua. Besides the fact that it is a beautiful city, rich in history, art and architecture and where there are far less tourists than in other places; from March 14th to June 27th, 2010 there will be an exhibition of The Gonzaga Tapestries from the Renaissance. From Mantegna to Raphael and Giulio Romano.

A friend in Mantua tells me there are two exhibitions; one at the Palazzo Tè and one at the Ducal Palace. The exhibition at the Ducal Palace is a permanent exhibition but if you're going for the tapestries, you should really go to both!

I had the opportunity to see the Ducal Palace a few years ago, but didn't make it to the Palazzo Tè... well, we went to the bookshop... but the museum was closed for the day. I'll just have to go back with more time to spare!

More information (in Italian) on the exhibition can be found here. If you go to the Art Newspaper's website and click on the heading "The Gonzaga Tapestries" under 'Mantua, Italy/Museo Civico Palazzo Tè', there is some information in English.

Old Books

At some point I decided to start a library and collect all the books I could find on Italian Needlework. This was (and still is) an expensive endeavour as usually I end up paying twice the cover price of the book because the shipping costs from Italy are so high. Long ago I told myself it was worth it and so I stopped being freaked out by costs and learned to treasure my books for the individual delights that they are. Sure I sacrifice, I don't spent a lot on going out to restaurants, etc. so I allow myself the cost of building my library. I try to limit myself to those books I would really like to have but once in awhile I splurge and buy ones that are just great eye candy.

The first old book I bought was one year at Christmas. An original 1925 edition of Elisa Ricci's Ricami Italiani Antichi e Moderni, Le Monnier, Firenze [Italian Embroideries, Ancient and Modern]. This book is outrageously priced at antique book stores in Italy but I happened across a copy being sold from England for about half of what it was usually going for. I don't even remember where I purchased it from but it wasn't through Ebay or any of the big book chains. The bookstore told me that it wasn't in great shape but that it had all it's pages. That was good enough for me. I told myself it was an essential book to research on Italian Needlework and that sooner or later I would have to have it – and I might never find it so "reasonably" priced. Ah! ...the ways we can justify things to ourselves! I worried and sweat for a month waiting for it to arrive. When it did I understood the shipping costs as it weighs 3.5 lbs!


Hardcover, embossed and gilt. I didn't own anything like it. It is kind of worn away around the edges and two pages were folded over. Other than that, it is pristine. Moreover I don't think anyone ever really studied it. The pages are clean on the edges and there were even four pages that hadn't quite been cut apart properly so that they were still attached to the preceding one at the top edge.

And the contents! I had never seen one book with so many different Italian embroidery techniques and though the photographs are all black and white, there are a great many of them. Of course the text is in Italian and so I had to set about researching some embroidery terminology translations but in the end it has and still does given me countless hours of enjoyment.

A few years later an Italian woman who was (still is!) researching the life and work of the author was able to have this text reprinted in a smaller paperback format. She enriched the text with a detailed index and it is the copy that I use most for research now. I still take the original edition out quite often as the pictures are larger – being that the book is much larger – so I can get out a magnifying glass and really study the details.

Oh I was so hooked after that on old books!

Since those days, the internet has opened up many opportunities and it is much easier now to spend my money. I also now know a bit more about what I'm looking for. Now I have to weigh the pros and cons of each purchase... is it out of copyright and available on websites like the Antique Pattern Library or the Digital Archive of Documents on Weaving and Related Topics? How much of the content is text and how much is patterns or pictures? Will I be able to easily find another copy another time? Other things to consider are things like: does it come from a smoke-free environment? Has it been kept in a moldy basement? If these things are important to you, ask the bookseller. I once bought a stitch encyclopedia that had to sit outside in a bag with a carbon filter and a bag of coffee beans for a really long time before I could handle leafing through it.

Best of all old embroidery books give us a window to the past. A different way of life, a slower pace. A time when there was more opportunity to embroider, and more things to be embroidered!

Websites I like to haunt for old Italian needlework books are:
Maremagnum
Abebooks Italy
LibriBooks
MareLibri
Ebay Italy
Please note that most of these website also sell modern books so watch for publication dates!

You can learn more about Elisa Ricci at TuttoRicamo under the headings "History" and "Prominent Characters", you can also read a review of Ricami Italiani Antichi e Moderni in the "Books" section under "Antique Books" (right hand side of the page), click on "comments".

Shops in Rome

In the spring of 2007 I packed up my daughter and we went to Italy. It was her first time and I dragged her all over before abandoning her with the kids of embroidery friends of mine so I could enjoy the Italia Invita Lace and Embroidery Forum in Rimini. I thought it was a good deal. I spent nearly two weeks agreeing to her every whim so that in the end, all she had to do was hang out with friends while her mother went crazy. We'll talk about how crazy I went in another post!

At the beginning and again at the end of the trip we stayed with a stitching friend and her family in Rome. One afternoon after fulfilling my daughter's wish to see the Castel Sant'Angelo and St. Peter's Square, we took a side trip to try and find a little shop in Borgo Vittorio called Italia Garipoli Laboratorio. We came along to number 91 to find that the shop was closed. This didn't stop us from pressing our faces to the window to see the embroideries and laces on display inside. My friend's husband found us amusing:


The sign read "embroideries and restorations"... we were intrigued but alas could not go in. In the photo you can just make out some needlework pinned to the wall on the right-hand side. They were lovely drawn-thread works.

The next time I was in Rome was in 2009 and this same friend took us to a different shop near Piazza Navona, Le Tele di Carlotta in Via dei Coronari no. 228, where we met the owner Simona Virgilio and observed a one-on-one lesson being given to a girl who'd come from France to learn Reticello. We bought some lovely pieces of Italian linen there!


I have a list of shops I want to visit but never seem to find the time, I'll list them here in the hopes that perhaps you might be able to visit them:

Downtown near Piazza Venezia there is Canetta in Via IV Novembre n. 157/B, they are the company that publishes the embroidery magazine Mani di Fata and here you can get fabric, books, patterns and stitching supplies. I have only peered into the window of their shop in Milan, but they seem to have lots of embroidery stuff.

Then there are many textile shops along Via delle Botteghe Oscure near the Ghetto in the Largo Argentina area.

A little ways out of the "downtown" area (you can take the metro and it is apparently well worth the trouble) there is Rinaldi-Decoricamo in Viale di Valle Aurelia no. 61.

I would really like to visit the embroidery school/laboratory CBC Needlepoint in Via Confalonieri n. 1. They do some absolutely stupendous goldwork embroidery.

Please leave a comment if you know of other stores!

Check out this post for more shops in Rome.

Aemilia Ars Peacock Tablecloth

In the book Merletti e Ricami della Aemilia Ars (1929) which is a celebration and showcase of the laces made by the Aemilia Ars Society of Bologna in the latter part of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, there are so many incredible laces that one becomes quickly desensitized. You must take each piece and study only that one, every time you open this book in order to appreciate and even to notice how amazing each individual lace is. Every piece represents more than countless hours of painstaking work, every piece reflects the imagination and talent of it's maker and carries the history of Bologna, needle lace and Italy really. Nothing, nothing looks like it. There are other types of needlelaces, and they each have their own styles – not to say that they aren't breathtaking in their own beauty either... but there is some kind of soul in Aemilia Ars lace. If you let yourself really look at it... it is alive. The moveme nt of the designs, the designs themselves – flow somehow. It is difficult to describe how I feel in front of it. Mostly I have to remember to keep my mouth closed as it is frequently opened in awe. My mother's quick backhand is forever imprinted in my brain so I keep my hands firmly clasped behind my back but I lean in very close and try to absorb everything.

Where was I? Oh yes, the book... among the myriad of stunning pieces there is a tablecloth. Such a tablecloth it is! It was called La passeggiata dei pavoni [the promenade of the peacocks] and was executed from a sketch by Alfonso Rubbiani (1848-1913). The centre measured 2.4 x .62 metres and the whole tablecloth including criss-crossing borders wa s 5.2 x 2.2 metres. That's a little more than 17 x 7 feet! Can you imagine producing feet of needlelace?!? The tablecloth was first produced for 'Mr. Vanderbilt and then again for Mr. Bache, both of New York'. It was produced twice.

If I could only study one piece of Aemilia Ars in my life, this is the one. There are 12 peacocks in the centre, 2 fountains, 2 big vases with grotesques and 8 smaller vases containing many types of flowers, leafy branches, pomegranates, acorns, grasses, wheels and picots galore! Flowers my untrained eye recognizes are roses with carnations down the sides... there are many flowers and forms that I have no names for... lozenges, curlicues and even 8 capital Vees (for Vanderbilt, I assume).


I thought that surely this would be easy to find, being such a thing of beauty, the family members of the Vanderbilts and the Baches would surely have treasured these tablecloths. I embarked on a search. I wrote to all the Vanderbilt museums and after a bit of research I found that Mr. Bache's things eventually came to be the property of the Metropolitan Museum. Not one museum answered my queries. Fair enough, I'm sure there are lots of people doing research and they must be busy. I cannot however get to New York to investigate myself. A very kind woman at the Smithsonian confirmed that they don't have it and she was kind enough to send me photos of what they did have which we'll talk about in another post. I poked around investigating old newspaper clippings regarding the Vanderbilts and found a notice of a devastating fire in which much was lost including "many linens". This makes me just ill to think about. Could this piece of art have been lost to fire? Short of trying to contact Anderson Cooper to see if he or his mother have the tablecloth in the linen closet, I'm out of ideas.

A final note: In the book L'Aemilia Ars di Antonilla Cantelli written by the granddaughter of a master of Aemilia Ars, there is a heartwarming piece. Above the picture of a detail of an Aemilia Ars needlelace peacock surrounded by flowers and in front of a fountain is the following note:
"Grandma I'm getting married and I would like a gift: the promenade of the peacocks." It goes on to say that she (the granddaughter) asked so simply and that her grandmother responded just as simply: You're mad! However, the gift was designed and made by Grandma just the same. I imagine that the granddaughter must have sobbed with joy. The following page in the book shows the newer version of the 'Promenade' – only a touch simpler and no less beautiful – the same size as the original.

Adele della Porta

Many books on Italian needlework were written by Adele della Porta in the early part of the 20th century.

I thought it might be interesting to find out a bit about this woman who wrote so much. Initial searches on the internet turned up nothing but every now and then I check out all the links I can which quote her name. I wish I could search genealogy records in Italy in person, but that is not possible at this time so lets just say that for now, this in an incomplete biography.

Adele Colombini was born in 1859. She married Augusto Mazzucchetti, a journalist and writer, and had two children: Mario and Lavinia. Mario died at 23 in 1910 from typhus. Both her family and her husband's family were Milanese but I can find no data as to whether that means the city of Milan proper or it's surrounding area. I cannot find a marriage date either.

Due to the political connections of her husband and his involvement in the emancipation of women, she was able to publish her writings with the Sonzogno publishing house of Milan. She assumed the pseudonym of Adele della Porta and compiled and edited books and magazines on women's fashion. She gradually became the director and managing editor of the magazines: La Novità, Il Ricamo, La Moda Illustrata, La Moda Illustrata per Bambini, La Biancheria Elegante and Parisienne Grande Mode. It seems her daughter Lavinia, then a high school student, helped her mother with both the compilation and translation of foreign texts especially those in French and German. Lavinia would go on to become an important literary scholar, critic and translator.

Adele died in Milan in 1948, she was predeceased by her husband who died in 1914.

I have been able to compile a list of the books that she wrote, edited or illustrated for the Sonzogno publishing house. Please leave a comment if you know of errors or other publications that I may have missed. Some of these are available for download at Tuttoricamo, as they are no longer covered by copyright laws. Some can be found occasionally on Ebay or its sister site Italian Ebay. There are a couple of digital copies for sale here.

One day I hope to have them all in one form or another as they are valuable resources in the research and understanding of Italian Needlework. One day I hope to know more about this incredible lady who assembled all this information.

Il Grosso richelieu, 1915 [Large Richelieu Cutwork]
Il punto di Palestrina, 1919 [Palestrina Embroidery]
Il punto filet. Album 1, 1915 [Filet or Lacis]
Il punto filet. Album 2, 1915
Il punto filet. Album 3, 1919
Il punto filet. Album 4, 1919
Il punto filet. Album 5, 1919
Il punto filet. Album 6, 1920
Il punto filet. Album 7, 1920
Il punto filet. Album 8, 1928
Il punto filet a maglie larghe, 1922 [Filet or Lacis on large grids]
Il punto Milano, 1916
Il punto norvegese, 1917 [Hardanger]
Il punto norvegese a colori, 1917 [Hardanger in colour]
La sarta, 1926 [Sewing manual]
Nuovi pizzi rinascimento. Album 1, 1924 [New Renaissance Laces]
Nuovi pizzi rinascimento. Album 2, 1924
Nuovi pizzi rinascimento. Album 3, 1924
Pizzo ad uncinetto, 1917 [Crochet Lace]
Pizzo Irlanda, 1915 [Irish Crochet Lace]
Pizzo Irlanda fine, 1915 [Fine Irish Crochet Lace]
Punto a Giorno, 1923 [Drawn Thread work, hemstitching]
Punto d'Assisi. Album 1, 1916 [Assisi Embroidery]
Punto d'Assisi. Album 2, 1916
Punto di Rodi e Punto Barro, 1919 [Pulled Thread work and Cutwork]
Punto di Venezia. Fasc. 1, 1919 [Venetian Lace]
Punto di Venezia. Fasc. 2, 1919
Punto di Venezia. Fasc. 3, 1919
Punto in Croce moderno. Album 1, 1915 [Modern Cross Stitch]
Punto in Croce moderno. Album 2, 1915
Punto in Croce moderno. Album 3, 1915
Punto in Croce moderno. Album 4, 1915
Punto in Croce moderno. Album 5, 1915
Ricamo con nastrino Graziella, 19??
Ricamo di Casal Guidi, 1915 [Casalguidi Embroidery]