DOI Heft:
No.252 (April 1914)
DOI Artikel:Ricci, Elisa: The revival of needlework in Italy
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21209#0212
Revival of Needlework in Italy
PORTION OF A COLLAR WORKED IN VENETIAN POINT (Photo PerazZO)
Although from an artistic point of view these
works are copied from old models which are
nearly always characteristic and peculiar to certain
districts, they are modified and adapted in form
and application to the tastes and needs of daily
life. Thus, Sicilian drawn-thread work formerly
used on " Giraletti" (bed-drapery), which hygiene
has banished, is now used chiefly for blinds and
for blouses. But the method of working is the
same and the actual designs are identical with the old
patterns. This little revival has sprung from a desire
to return to those splendid old forms which it has
started to copy. The style, as well as the technical
part which our workers have re-mastered, is really
the natural taste of our people.
When little by little, and almost unconsciously,
the older traditions were abandoned in search of
newer ideas, these ideas, although new, could not
be anything but Italian, and thus it is that even
tiie original creations of our most sincere artists
bear a faint and badly dissimulated trace of
classicism from which they cannot free themselves.
Why should they try? Vice versa, the foreign
needlewoman who imagines that she is faithfully and
exactly reproducing, stitch for stitch, an old pattern,
manages to introduce a modern touch which is not
visible in the old pattern.
206
These two facts are clearly demonstrated by two
examples—one is the collar with peacocks, of which
a portion is reproduced on this page. In this
every detail was faithfully copied from the " Corona
delle Nobili Dame " by Cesare Vecellio : peacocks,
ornamentation, figures, not a single detail was in-
vented. And yet, even to one who is not very
familiar with old lace, this beautiful collar at once
appears modern: modern precisely for its very
design and composition, which has involuntarily, in
fact against every intention, succeeded in being of
typically modern style.
The opposite happens when Italy is looked to for
modern style. At Bologna the "^Emilia Ars," a
Society founded with really modern artistic inten-
tions, had the great fortune to meet with the support
and directorship of two cultured and exquisite
artists : Alfonso Rubbiani and Achille Casanova.
They began by reproducing with positive genius
some old models, found in a rare and precious old
volume belonging to Marchesi Nerio Malvezzi, but
when they began to create new styles, such as
the magnificent Vanderbilt tablecloth (p. 197),
underlying the fresh, gay and delicate personal
note of the design, one nevertheless felt some-
thing of the nobility of an older and traditional
art. E. R.
PORTION OF A COLLAR WORKED IN VENETIAN POINT (Photo PerazZO)
Although from an artistic point of view these
works are copied from old models which are
nearly always characteristic and peculiar to certain
districts, they are modified and adapted in form
and application to the tastes and needs of daily
life. Thus, Sicilian drawn-thread work formerly
used on " Giraletti" (bed-drapery), which hygiene
has banished, is now used chiefly for blinds and
for blouses. But the method of working is the
same and the actual designs are identical with the old
patterns. This little revival has sprung from a desire
to return to those splendid old forms which it has
started to copy. The style, as well as the technical
part which our workers have re-mastered, is really
the natural taste of our people.
When little by little, and almost unconsciously,
the older traditions were abandoned in search of
newer ideas, these ideas, although new, could not
be anything but Italian, and thus it is that even
tiie original creations of our most sincere artists
bear a faint and badly dissimulated trace of
classicism from which they cannot free themselves.
Why should they try? Vice versa, the foreign
needlewoman who imagines that she is faithfully and
exactly reproducing, stitch for stitch, an old pattern,
manages to introduce a modern touch which is not
visible in the old pattern.
206
These two facts are clearly demonstrated by two
examples—one is the collar with peacocks, of which
a portion is reproduced on this page. In this
every detail was faithfully copied from the " Corona
delle Nobili Dame " by Cesare Vecellio : peacocks,
ornamentation, figures, not a single detail was in-
vented. And yet, even to one who is not very
familiar with old lace, this beautiful collar at once
appears modern: modern precisely for its very
design and composition, which has involuntarily, in
fact against every intention, succeeded in being of
typically modern style.
The opposite happens when Italy is looked to for
modern style. At Bologna the "^Emilia Ars," a
Society founded with really modern artistic inten-
tions, had the great fortune to meet with the support
and directorship of two cultured and exquisite
artists : Alfonso Rubbiani and Achille Casanova.
They began by reproducing with positive genius
some old models, found in a rare and precious old
volume belonging to Marchesi Nerio Malvezzi, but
when they began to create new styles, such as
the magnificent Vanderbilt tablecloth (p. 197),
underlying the fresh, gay and delicate personal
note of the design, one nevertheless felt some-
thing of the nobility of an older and traditional
art. E. R.