St. Bridget's Altar Cloth

Almost a year ago I was contacted by a lady from Sweden who is the grand-daughter of a lady named Elsa Peterson who started a lacemaking company in Vadstena in 1920. Today the company is run by the lady who contacted me's 90-year-old mother and she was interested in reproducing some old patterns so that they would not be lost.

Now, there was a highly skilled designer/lacemaker named Aurore Ingelotz who lived in Vadstena from 1889 to 1893. She specialized in making designs for the church. In 1895 she made and sent a lace altar cloth to Santa Brigida Church in Rome. Now St. Bridget of Sweden came from Vadstena so you can begin to see the connection. (Aurore's work was so good, some of it was selected to represent Sweden at the 1893 Chicago World Exposition.)

Well, back to our story. Some of Aurore Ingelotz's patterns were recovered from an attic and found their way into Elsa Peterson's possession. Here you can read (with the aid of Google Translator if you don't speak Swedish) the fascinating story of the research behind these patterns done by the lady who contacted me.

While doing her research, this lady was trying to find out if the lace altar cloth sent to Rome in 1895 still existed. We contacted Santa Brigida Church to find out that yes, it was still there and was used and exhibited once a year during the celebrations of the canonization of St. Bridget on October 7.

As I was going to be in Rome at the time, I offered to try to see if I could get some photos of the altar cloth or at the very least, go to see it for myself. The sisters of Santa Brigida also took some pictures in the meantime and when we visited they were very kind to let my friend and I have a few minutes after the ceremony alone at the altar to take a few photos.

The altar cloth is 4.4 meters long and 1.3 meters wide, at each end there is a medallion (two different designs) and there is a lace border of 20 cm wide.

You can see more about this altar cloth here. See the display of the patterns in the shop window here.

Thank you very much Karin for letting us share in your adventure!

Fabric and thread shops in Rome

I spent seven glorious days in Rome the first week of this past October with friends who live on the outskirts of the city. The first day after arriving from the airport, we headed out to celebrate our visit with a gelato. That was it, no big plans, it was late afternoon and I'd been up some 24 hours or more.

To get to the gelateria, you must pass a merceria which is a shop which carries embroidery threads, fabrics, buttons, ribbons, sewing notions and the like. We decided to stop in just for a minute...

I swear I only wanted to get the no. 30 coton a broder thread!
But then there was a table with discontinued Anchor threads on sale. I couldn't let that silk just sit there, or the pearl cotton either. After we had rung up the purchase, the clerk told us that he also had discontinued colours of Anchor coton a broder no. 25 on sale too...

... so we had to go back the next day. Luckily I had my iPod with my list of what I already have at home, even though in the end if I'd taken one of everything I would have only ended up with a couple of duplicates. Needless to say, we had a delightful time going through all the drawers filled with threads.

This merceria as I said is on the outskirts of Rome but in the case that you might be nearby on one of your travels to Italy, the store is in Via Millesimo no. 53 in the suburb called Torrevecchia.

A couple of days later we headed into the centre of Rome to see some newly restored silk and gold embroidered vestments at the Church of St. Francis a Ripa Grande. Along the way from the bus stop in Piazza Venezia to where we took the street car to Trastevere, we walked through the section of town where there are some textile-related stores.

Paganini Fabric Store, Via Botteghe Oscure, no. 50, Rome.

We stopped in at the Paganini fabric store which is a huge place with 14 window displays. They have been around since 1948 and carry all kinds of fabrics and rugs. You can see some photos of the inside of the store here.

I bought some "cencio della nonna" which is a linen gauze (11 threads per centimetre) for backing Trapunto. You can see it on the back of Silvana Vannini's Trapunto project here.

From there we headed to the Merceria Alfis in Largo Ginnasi no. 6 where (among the threads and other textile things) they have a large selection of buttons.

Check out my previous post for more shops in Rome. Do you have a favorite textile-related store in Rome? Leave a comment below!

Old films on Lace and Embroidery

I just have to re-direct you over to Silvia's blog Dentelles d'Abord for lots of links to old films on YouTube on lace and embroidery from the 1920s, '30s, '40s and '50s!!!!!

Thanks so much Silvia for discovering these!

Italian Holiday

Well, if you've been wondering what had happened to me, I've been in Italy for a month!

I just got back and haven't unpacked yet but I wanted to give you a little preview of things to come...

I visited Bologna (needlelace piece from the Collezioni Comunali d’Arte Museum in Bologna):

...Sicily (sign for the Drawn Thread Work Museum in Chiaramonte Gulfi):

...Sardinia (Byssus Museum in Sant'Antioco):

...Parma (Puncetto stand at the Italia Invita Textile Forum 2011):

...and Florence (Palazzo Davanzati Museum and the trapunto quilt reproduction stitched by Silvana Vannini):

It was a needlework-themed holiday and I saw and did so very many lovely things!

Special thanks to Elisabetta for the photos of Bologna and Sicily! 

Please be patient while I get myself organized and start to answer all your emails!!

Gabriella Pescucci

There is a new television series on Showtime called The Borgias. Always a sucker for a period piece, I tuned in...

Wow! It's beautiful! Historical inaccuracies are a bit disturbing but it's worth tuning in to enjoy the costumes!

It did not surprise me in the least to discover that the costume designer for this series is the extremely gifted, academy award-winning Italian costume designer Gabriella Pescucci.

Gabriella Pescucci has caught my attention many times with her talents, perhaps you have admired her work without knowing who she was, there is a list of her projects here. She studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence and has worked with some of Italy's most famous costume designers, directors, filmakers and theatres. She worked with the Tirelli Costume firm in Rome, click on their name to explore their website for some eye candy!

If you can make it to Turin for the 150th anniversary celebrations, you can check out the Fashion in Italy exhibit at the Venaria Reale under the art direction of Gabriella Pescucci and Franca Sozzani which has some pieces from the Tirelli collection.

There is an interview with Gabriella Pescucci in the book Costume Design by Deborah Nadoolman Landis, and you can feel the love of what she does through how she describes working on costumes and with fabrics. Here you can see a short video of her talking about how she enjoys her work, and here there are a few seconds of her describing her work (with subtitles) on The Borgias (at 1:40).

Explore the Showtime website Borgia Wiki for more on the costumes of the series, as this show is brand new there is not a lot of material there but they add more after each episode.

Rome Expo of the Feminine Arts 1899-1900

I'm sorry, I've been very busy and unable to post for days. It may be a couple more days before I can get caught up so in the meantime, I want to share some photos with you which were sent to me by the fabulous Claudio at the Ning group MI1906 of postcards that he has in his collection.

Claudio tells me that there must have been at least 40 postcards in the series, so far he has collected about half that amount.

The postcards all read: Ricordo dell'Esposizione d'Arte e di Lavori Femminili nel Teatro Drammatico Nazionale [Souvenir of the Exposition of Art and Feminine Works in National Dramatic Theatre]. Rome 1899-1900.

Click on the photos for a closer look:


The only thing I can find on the exposition is in the biography of an Italian writer named Amelia Pincherle Rosselli (1870-1954). She was a member of the committee for the exposition. The Fondazione Rosselli has a listing of her personal papers online to peruse and it is here that I find the exposition "inaugurated on April 3, 1902" at the Hotel Suisse in Rome. Since these dates don't correspond with the postcards, I wonder if there was another expo? Unfortunately only some of the documents are online. I will post more at a later date after I have researched some more into this.

Deepest gratitude goes to Claudio once again for the photos!

On An Evening in Roma

Last year after an exhaustive day touring the Vatican and all its textile treasures, we were invited to have dinner in our tour guide's home. Located right in downtown Rome, Simonetta's apartment had a beautiful terrazza where we ate the most delicious meal. We weren't there long before we started to notice the various embroidered household linens in use around the house. When asked about them, I expected Simonetta to say that she had done them herself but she said they were all done by her mother. I begged her to let me get a closer look and take some pictures.

All the linens were in use, so you will notice that some have stains because we did spill during dinner. Simonetta took it in stride telling us not to worry, she knew how to get out stains. It would be a pity to to put the linens away where no one ever saw her mother's beautiful work and she said that it felt a little like her mother was with her, to have her things all around.

This tablecloth has a design of applied Crochet chain lengths in different shades of Coral with Drawn Threadwork criss-crossing in sections around the edges...


This serving tray cloth is stitched in Punto Stuoia [Rush Stitch] which is similar to Roumanian Couching. It is an excellent stitch to use for filling areas as it is a self-couching stitch and gives great coverage without bulk as most of the thread lays on the front side of the work and only the tiny couching stitches show on the back (see the post on Bizantina Ars for an example of front and back):


This was my favourite and I took many pictures but this one shows a little of all the features. Padded Satin Stitched roses in an Art Nouveau (known in Italy as Liberty) design, Drawn Threadwork lines connecting motifs of Netting worked in the Linen Stitch (also known as the Cloth Stitch). It was exquisitely worked.


The wine stain was an excellent Chianti Riserva that we picked up at the Castello di Verrazzano on our way through Tuscany. They had the most interesting embroidered curtains... but we'll talk about that another time.

Our last evening together in Rome was spent in the very best way: among friends with great food and wine, admiring Italian needlework!

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.