Botticelli in the Lombard Collections - Poldi Pezzoli Museum

If you are anywhere near Milan before the end of this month and want to see some fantastic goldwork embroidery from 15th century Florence when it was at its height of splendor, you should head off to the Poldi Pezzoli Museum.

There you will find the hood of a cope executed from a cartoon by Botticelli (c.1480s) as part of a collection of liturgical vestments commissioned most probably by King John II of Portugal. The Portugese ambassador to Florence at the time, Cardinal James of Lusitania died in Florence in 1459 and was buried at the San Miniato al Monte Basilica of Florence. Great expense went into building and decorating the Chapel for the Cardinal and some of Florence's leading artists at the time contributed to the artwork and its construction.

The hood of this cope is done in silk shaded goldwork embroidery. Florence was well known for excellency in this technique as I told you about previously. The design is the Coronation of the Virgin. Information on it from the museum says "...is absolutely the most beautiful embroidery that has been handed down to us executed on the design of the artist."

Check out the details on the folds of this angel's robe (click on the photos for a closer look):

And the pattern designs on this architectural representation:

More exquisite details:

The exhibit: Botticelli in the Lombard Collections is to mark the 500th anniversary of the artist's death in 1510 and has been on display since this past November.

Photos courtesy of the Poldi Pezzoli Museum and are subject to copyright. They can be downloaded from the Museum's website and used only to promote the exhibit.

Thanks to Linda for making me look! 

This exhibit has been extended until the 25th of March, 2011!

Italian Hope Chests

I really am still here... just very busy, it won't last too much longer. In the meantime it occurred to me to point you to an article I wrote about the Italian Hope Chest (cassone in Italian) for TuttoRicamo. (**This article can now be found here)

It is a subject that fascinates me. Do you see the two ladies in the background of this marvelous Titian painting digging in what looks like a matching pair of cassoni?

A great book in English on painted cassoni of the Renaissance is The Triumph of Marriage by Cristelle Baskins. The painting above was done for a cassone by Botticelli and depicts the story of Lucrezia.

Venus of Urbino painted in 1538 by Titian - image courtesy of Wikipedia.
Story of Lucrezia painted between 1496 and 1504 by Botticelli - image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Veronese Crochet Lace - Il Pizzo di Verona

I can finally tell you some exciting news!

If you've been wondering why it's been so quiet on my blog lately, part of the reason is that I've been translating a fascinating text on a nearly-forgotten Italian needlework technique from the early 20th century called Il Pizzo di Verona or Veronese Crochet Lace.

The book will be published in about a month or so and presented at Palazzo Forti in Verona on March 12, 2011 at 11 am. I greatly envy you if you can go!

Bianca Rosa Bellomo will present the book during a lecture about historical events in Verona in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and how they impacted the creator of this lace, Laudomia Spazzi-Gonevino and her family. She will no doubt fascinate you with the story of how the authors of this new book (Anna Castagnetti, Donatella Granzarolo and Bianca Rosa Bellomo herself) researched this technique and it's creator and her family, starting from two all-but-forgotten booklets published in the early 20th century edited by Amelia Brizzi Ramazzotti for the Sonzogno publishing house in Milan.

Also from March 8th - 12th there will be free demonstrations of how to make this exquisite crochet and needle lace during the show Verona Tessile: "Le vie della seta si incontrano a Verona" [Verona Textile Show: The silk roads meet in Verona"].

March 8th is also International Women's Day which is widely celebrated in Italy so it is fitting that there be a celebration of a woman's life at this time.

This new book has some historical information as well as step-by-step instructions and photos for creating this beautiful crochet and needle lace, the text is in Italian and English. It is published by the NuovaS1 publishing house in Italy and I have no doubt that Elena at Italian Needlecrafts will have it for sale as soon as it becomes available. I can't wait to get my hands on a copy!

Italian Almanacs

Often when I'm researching online, I lose hours and hours just browsing documents. It's always interesting and once in a while I find things relating to what I was looking for in the first place. Most often though, I find things that take me on a completely different path.

I started out looking for something on the Universal Exposition of Turin in 1911 and ended up discovering that the Internet Archive has some scanned copies of old Italian Almanacs from the beginning of the 20th century.

These are fun to browse through for the photos and advertisements if you don't read any Italian. They are like mini-encyclopedias and re-caps of the news of the past year and the events for the next year.

Sometimes there are pages of summaries of other articles from previous issues which send you on your way to check out something you missed. Key words are: moda = fashion, lavori femminili = women's work, ricamo/i = embroidery/ies, trina/e or merletto/i or pizzo/i = laces.

In the 1914 Almanac, I came across this delightful Filet lace which is hard to tell if it was executed in the Darning Stitch or the Linen Stitch:

And this intriguing needle lace called Punto Sforza:

The accompanying article is brief and talks of the many different types of embroideries and laces and of the expositions of Siena, Turin and Paris. The author expresses a desire for more of such exhibitions in Italy "so that women can be encouraged to exercise their inventive faculties, and show what their intelligence is capable of producing."

With regard to Punto Sforza, it says that it is characterized by figures in lace stitches on a background of needle lace. It looks somehow familiar to me... like I've seen it somewhere else. Off I run to my library and in Lucia Petrali Castaldi's Dizionario Enciclopedico di Lavori Femminili it says:
 ... execution derived on a variation of the Milanese Lace... hmmm. Elisa Ricci's Trine a Fuselli doesn't seem to name it but there are some photos of exquisite pieces which seem to follow the criteria in the chapter on Milanese lace... yet, I know I've seen something very close to the photo from the Almanac somewhere...


Uh, oh... how did we get to "Milan" when I started out in "Turin"?
See how it happens? How easy it is to get distracted by beautiful things?!


Ah! Let me think about this Punto Sforza for a bit and let's see if something comes back to mind. In the meantime, have a browse through the old Almanacs for a bit of early 20th century Italy flavour.

Colourful Puncetto

I have long been an admirer of Puncetto needle lace from the Piedmont region of Italy.

Every once in a while, I take out my needle and thread and try to practice what I learned in two short hours of lessons at the 2009 Italia Invita Forum in Parma.

In May of this year there is even a 12 hour workshop available at the next biannual Italia Invita event to tempt me. While I wrestle with the decision of whether or not I can attend this workshop, I want to tell you about some special ladies who create beautiful coloured Puncetto which I first saw in a RAKAM magazine in March of 2008.

Last year there was another article about them in the April issue of Ricamo Italiano magazine.

Anna Rita Capone keeps a blog which I recently discovered with lots of pictures of her adventures with her maestra Ilaria Corradini.

The work is exquisite and the blog worth going through and looking at all her posts for each and every delightful and imaginative design and project.

Anna's latest Puncetto pieces have been single colour and she seems to be doing the work on commission so she doesn't have a choice in the colours but even the tone on tone pieces are beautiful!

What I wouldn't give to be able to execute the work these ladies do!

Retors D'Alsace - DMC Alsatian Twist Thread

In Italy in the spring of 2009, DMC re-released the thread they call Retors d'Alsace or Alsatian Twist.

It is available in two weights, no. 8 and no. 12 - similar to Pearl Cotton but twisted more and slightly different in thickness, and comes in 82 colours for the no. 8 and 65 colours for the no. 12. DMC states it is suitable for embroidery, cross stitch, crochet and lacemaking.

The skeins are 20 grams each and sell for around €4,20 which is about $5.60 USD using today's exchange rates. The thread is made of Egyptian long staple cotton which has been mercerized twice - this makes it both strong and shiny. Retors d'Alsace is made at DMC's plant in Mulhouse in the Alsace region of France.

DMC's Italian website says it is the return of a thread they made in the early 20th century. I looked in the back of my Italian 1926 copy of L'Uncinetto (Grosso Uncinetto) from the DMC Library [Grosso Uncinetto is Large Crochet in Italian] and I found a listing of Retors d'Alsace threads in weights ranging from 5 to 100!

I don't know when they stopped producing this lovely thread. If you search around on the internet, you can find some old spools of different weights of Retors d'Alsace, there are quite a few no. 50 weight ones here.

At the Italia Invita Forum of 2009, DMC had an impressive area to display their wares complete with stitched pieces from the old DMC Library of booklets. They were giving out samples of the "new" Retors d'Alsace. If you'd like to see what their display looks like when they visit shows in Italy, check out their blog.

Mary Corbet over at Needle 'n Thread did a review of Retors d'Alsace if you'd like to take a closer look.

Retors d'Alsace is widely available only in Italy. DMC had plans to distribute it in other European countries - but last I checked, it still wasn't even available in France!

Monogram categories

I recently purchased this little booklet written for young women c.1906 by Lucia Petrali Castaldi who would later (1925) become the editor of the Mani di Fata embroidery magazine and an accomplished author of many other texts.

There are 18 pages in total: four complete alphabets, four pages of examples of how to arrange monograms and ciphers, some images of other embroidery types which might compliment work with a monogram and a few words of wisdom.

I have translated a few lines below to give you an idea of the mood of the day for the young embroiderer in early 20th century Italy:

"Women and girls of good sense find it necessary to mark their linens, both personal and household, with their own initials or with their whole name.
On this point they are all in agreement: the differences begin with all the different ways to mark your linens. There are those who prefer something quick and adopt only one cursive initial - that of their last name - embroidered in Stem or Chain Stitch, when not resorting to the rapid, horrible stamping of indelible ink. They are practical women with little patience, always attracted by other treatments which do not require the measure of movements and tranquility of person. 
Some women prefer the traditional markings - on each piece - made with the no-less traditional Backstitch in red cotton: they are precise women, a bit limited, devoted to the past: they are never in a hurry and do everything the way one should.
Finally, there are women - real ladies - even if their purse is more than modest, meager, with brilliant views of educated taste.
They known to adopt, when appropriate, one or another of the various techniques and use them with finesse: although breathless from their daily tasks, they know how to find the time for so many beautiful works: beautiful not in material wealth, but in the good taste of choice and execution. 
{...}
Well prepared monograms executed with skill, with the right effects of chiaroscuro, immediately give the idea of the completely personal and innate taste of the woman who chose them."

A design for around a buttonhole on a man's shirt.

Here is the listing on the last page of other booklets by Lucia Petrali Castaldi at the time: 

You can read more about Lucia Petrali Castaldi on the Tuttoricamo website: click on the British flag for the English version then "Prominent Characters".