Aemilia Ars Exhibit in Bologna April 10 - May 15

Oh to be in Bologna in springtime... this springtime!

At the Museo Davia Bargellini, Strada Maggiore, 44 in Bologna there will be an Aemilia Ars exhibit called: Aemilia Ars: merletti di inchiostro per merletti di filo. [Aemilia Ars: ink laces for thread laces] It is an exhibition of antique designs from the Aemilia Ars workshop, purchased by the City of Bologna in 1937.

I've translated the description from the website link above:

The exhibition is 30 antique designs from the early 20th century drawn for the embroidery and lace section of the Aemilia Ars Society. 

Sketches of large tablecloths are exhibited alongside detailed drawings, designed by Alfonso Rubbiani, Alfredo Tartarini, Alberto Pasquinelli and other designers who prepared them in order to aid embroiderers and lacemakers to create with the needle the refined and much sought after textile products which were sold around the world.

Thanks to the efforts of the promoter of this commercial company, Lina Bianconcini Cavazza, at the end of the nineteenth century a new technique of needle lace was developed, today commonly called 'Aemilia Ars', suitable both for reproducing the drawings published in sixteenth and seventeenth century pattern books and to create works in line with the contemporary Art Nouveau taste; an essential step in the realization of the artefacts was the preparation of designs with specific characteristics which established artists performed by translating these cultural stimuli.

For the occasion of the exhibition Aemilia Ars: ink laces for thread laces, some events are dedicated also to modern 'Aemilia Ars lace' - at the Davia Bargellini Museum you can admire the lace and embroidery workshop's original designs which are usually kept in depositories to better ensure their conservation.
 
These valuable materials will be able to interact with some examples of decorative ironwork preserved in the first room of the museum, in particular the spectacular sign of the Sante Mingazzi workshop and the refined gate of the Matteucci of Faenza company; in fact, these craftsmen were themselves a part of the artistic craftsman redevelopment project sponsored by the Aemilia Ars Society, active from 1898 to 1903.

Other events in conjunction with the exhibition will be three presentations sponsored by the Italian book store Feltrinelli in Piazza Galvani: a volume published for FENDI about the ability of Italian handicrafts; the books dedicated to Aemilia Ars needle lace produced by the Association Il Punto Antico of San Giovanni in Persiceto and a free workshop on the making of Aemilia Ars needle lace by teachers from the Association Il Punto Antico. 

The event inauguration will be April 9th at 5pm at the Museo Davia Bargellini. 

If you are in Bologna for this event, do not miss the stunning collection of needle lace pieces at the Collezioni Comunali d'Arte Museum!!!

Aemilia Ars Dress

A kind gentleman named Claudio over at the MI1906 Milan 1906 World's Fair website has brought to my attention a magazine article he found while looking for something else in a copy of L'Illustrazione Popolare Sunday Edition no. 46 for the 14th of October, 1906 (click on the photo for a closer look):


I give you the entire article in Italian for those Italian readers and I will translate it here below for those English-speaking readers.

Unfortunately it corresponds with a photo in Merletti e Ricami della Aemilia Ars (1929). What must have been a completely amazing dress, tragically lost to fire when the Fine Arts Pavillion was consumed by flames on the night of the 2nd-3rd of August, 1906. (Click on the photo for a closer look):


The caption in Merletti e Ricami della Aemilia Ars reads:

"Dress designed from a sketch by A. Rubbiani by A. Casanova and executed by commission for Signora Marsaglia Balduino (Genoa) in 1905, according to the fashion of the time. There were 15 different kinds of birds among flowers, fruits and ornaments. The hemline was made of individually attached peacock feathers so as to be light and rich at the same time."

The article from L'Illustrazione Popolare reads:

Needlework Miracles burned at the Exposition in Milan

Because at least the memory remains of an object worthy of note lost in the fire – August 3rd – in the Italian Decorative Arts Pavilion, we believe it opportune to present to our readers the gown executed in punto in aria without seams and made on commission, as an almost actual-size detail of the patient work. It was made in two months by sixty-five workers at the Aemilia Ars workshop from a design by A. Casanova. In its sweet whiteness and in its fair and refined richness the beautiful gown made one think of a gift from a fairy who had wanted to wrap up and protect a princess in a cloud of leaves, flowers, birds because she was the most elegant of women. And this dreamy gown, an envied masterpiece was itself destroyed along with many other beautiful things that fateful night.

The flames also burned the laces of the company Jesurum of Venice. So many other wonderful things lost! They were the results of more than a year of study done by Jesurum of the most remarkable reproductions of ancient works and for that purpose many repeated trips were made to visit a few precious originals kept in the Decorative [Arts] Museums of Paris, Antwerp and Brussels. They had also specially bought ancient fragments and made many very expensive attempts to achieve results which are now lost. Among the most important works displayed were a cushion, table centres and doilies, reproduced for the first time from the Byzantine medallions of the church of Torcello, which were bought by the best lace dealer in Paris, Lescure: a Gothic placemat all embroidery and needle lace, a trim rich in a plastron collar [sorry, I don't know what this is!] fan of needlepoint lace, so fine that it was necessary to put a strong lens in front of them so that the public might see the design and workmanship; a complete trim of Rosaline Point, the finest that has been made in recent times; an embroidered blanket, made with all the needle lace stitches manufactured by Jesurum in Burano; a complete rich collection of Burano laces of every stitch; window curtains and covers in every stitch, individually designed and studied; an outfit in coloured lace, bobbin lace, etc.

There were also many items for the table, including a magnificent placemat, composed of sixty-four squares with sixty-four different designs, handkerchiefs, ties, fans. A few reproductions of antique Pellestrina lace were placed together with original pieces from the same Pellestrina museum to show the accuracy of the copy. Jesurum had insured its exhibit for thirty thousand lire, but the damages are, in a complexity of respects, incalculable.

Captions for the L'Illustrazione Popolare photos are as follows:
Photo of dress: Gown executed in punto in aria, without seams, destroyed in the fire at the Decorative Arts Pavilion on the 3rd of August at the Exposition in Milan.

Photo of dress detail: Detail of the gown in punto in aria, exhibited in the Decorative Arts Pavilion, destroyed by the fire of the 3rd of August.

If anyone can tell me about the plastron collar fan - I'd appreciate it!

Many thanks to Claudio for this article!

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.