Irenebrination: Notes on Architecture, Art, Fashion, Fashion Law & Technology
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Will We See the Rise of a New "Slow Textile" Movement After Coronavirus?
In yesterday's post we mentioned the mechanical loom designed by Leonardo da Vinci, one of the most complex machines invented by the Italian polymath. His loom was indeed based on manual machines observed in Tuscany and in Lombardy, but it was equipped with an automatic flying shuttle, a mechanism that was only re-visited during the pre-industrial age.
The machine was arranged on two levels - the upper part featuring the actual weaving devices and the lower with the organs for unrolling the warp and wrapping the fabric. To make such machines Leonardo studied textiles, their composition, the way they reflected the light and the patterns characterising some of them.
There are still some companies in Italy that employ original looms from a few centuries ago to make their textiles, among them there is also Venice-based Tessitura Bevilacqua famous for its handwoven soprarizzo (literally "over the curl") velvet in two different kinds of pile - curly velvet and cut velvet.
The company was founded by Luigi Bevilacqua and Giovanni Battista Gianoglio in 1875 that set up their business in a building in Fondamenta San Lorenzo, in the Castello area of Venice. Their looms belonged to the Weaving School of The Republic of Venice, closed at the beginning of the 1800s by Napoleon and they look like the ones you may spot in pages of Diderot and D'Alembert's Encyclopedia.
As you may guess weaving on such looms is a time-consuming craft: it takes up to 2 people and from 1 to 3 or even 6 months to prepare a loom (a process that also means knotting 16,000 threads), depending from the loom and the complexity of the textile they have to make.
Apart from making historical textiles for mansions and museums, Tessitura Bevilacqua employs its textiles for its own line of accessories and interior design products and also collaborates with contemporary fashion designers. Their pattern archive is vast and nowadays it includes classical floral elements, motifs inspired by Leonardo da Vinci's original designs, and more modern abstract and geometrical designs.
A while back Tessitura Bevilacqua provided the fabrics for Yiqing Yin's A/W 15 collection for Leonard and last year Dior's Creative Director for women's wear, Maria Grazia Chiuri, commissioned special textiles to Bevilacqua that were incorporated in gowns worn by celebrities invited at the "Tiepolo Ball" (held on May 11th at the Palazzo Labia in Venice).
To engage a new generation of passionate fans of slow crafts, Bevilacqua started also its own Instagram page and YouTube. The latter features a few videos in which its weavers explain how their looms work and how the company's textiles are made. Hopefully new generations of textile and fashion designers will find these materials inspiring.
Coronavirus lockdown measures are currently being lifted (or in the process of being lifted) in some countries and there is a lot of talk about jobs being hit by the pandemic and how the fashion system will change. Surely the latter will be a bit slower as COVID-19 has disrupted our lives, but it has also taught us we should opt for less frantic rhythms.
And while pondering about the new rhythms fashion may adopt as things (hopefully) go back to normal, we should maybe wonder if in future we will see the rise of a new "slow textile" movement that promotes handmade fabrics made by highly skilled artisans. The manufacture of soprarizzo velvet is for example extremely slow as each loom can produce a few tens of centimetres a day, yet the final results are unique and rare and fill your eyes with the beauty of a timeless craft.
Irenebrination: Notes on Architecture, Art, Fashion and Style