Mezza Mandolina and Embroidered Netting

Happy New Year to everyone!
I have been occupied elsewhere lately but things are slowly returning to normal and I will get back to posting regularly soon. If you have emailed me, please be patient awhile longer, I will answer you eventually, there are many messages and only so much time to answer them.

It has come to my attention that some readers were confused as to the actual needlework technique of Mezza Mandolina and I realize that if you don't ever click on the links in the post, you will never know that it is a knotted netting.

Let's clarify a couple of things. First, if you see some words in a different colour than the rest of the text of the post or if it is underlined, that means you can click on it to go to a different website to see related photos or articles. Second, Mezza Mandolina in the post I wrote is a knotted netting technique similar to the netting made for Filet Lace (also called Lacis or Modàno).

If you look closely at this photo of Sardinian Filet Lace, you can see that at the intersection of threads there is a little knot:

When doing embroidered Filet, you must first make the netting ground. The tool used to make the netting is called the Modàno in Italian, which is why embroidered netting is often called Modàno Netting. In English it is called the shuttle. The following photo of a shuttle is from Therese de Dillmont's Needlework Encyclopedia book online:

Have a look at Therese de Dillmont's Needlework Encyclopedia book online to understand how knotted netting is made. There is also some history of Filet Netting here.

Back to Mezza Mandolina. As far as we understand from the old texts and painted portraits, Mezza Mandolina was made in the same way as Filet Lace, that is, it was a knotted netting which was then embroidered or not. Instead of making even rows of square meshes as in Filet Lace, Mezza Mandolina had several meshes which were bigger or smaller according to different patterns.

In this portrait of Eleonora di Toledo, you can see the embroidery on her blouse of Mezza Mandolina:

while in this portrait of Queen Elizabeth I of England, her blouse of a different pattern of Mezza Mandolina is not embroiderered (click on the photo for a closer look):

Interestingly, I have been told of a different technique which was also called Mezza Mandolina, done while weaving traditional Buratto fabric in Tuscany. As soon as I have some information on that, I will post it.

I hope this clears up some of the confusion regarding Mezza Mandolina. Please leave a comment below if I haven't answered all of your questions.

Have a look at this website for the author's adventures in recreating Mezza Mandolina. If you want to try it out, here are some tutorials. Or go here for Enza Termini's adventures in recreating Mezza Mandolina in Italian (click on the heading: Mezza Mandolina).

Mezza Mandolina - Complex Netting

I received an intriguing email some weeks ago from Enza Termine of Sicily. You may remember her from a previous post on circular netting.

Enza had come across a web page by an SCA member who was investigating Mezza Mandolina, a more complex type of netting or Lacis evidenced in a portrait by Bronzino of Eleonora, wife of Cosimo I de' Medici and another portrait of Elizabeth I of England. Both portraits date to the mid-to-late sixteenth century.

This is a detail of the Bronzino portrait taken from Elisa Ricci's Old Italian Lace, 1913, the netting has been further embellished with embroidery:

Enza had also found this page with Mezza Mandolina tutorials by the same SCA member for different patterns that she had been able to figure out by experimentation.

Enza was curious about the name of the technique Mezza Mandolina. We found it mentioned by Elisa Ricci in her Old Italian Lace, 1913 (Antiche Trine Italiane. Trine ad ago - 1908):
"There is a variety of mesh-work very seldom found existing now, although several designs for its manufacture are to be seen in an old pattern-book, Isabella Parasole's Studio delle virtuose Donne published in 1597; the work was known as mezza mandolina, and is a net of irregular mesh, sometimes left plain, but more often embroidered with little leaves in matting-stitch which fill the square mesh and join it to the others so that the background can hardly be seen between the interwoven figures."

In the Ricci text is the above portrait of Eleonora which is preceded by a photo of a pattern page for Mezza Mandolina from a different text by Isabetta C. Parasole called Gemma Pretiosa, 1615. There is then a photo of some plain (not embroidered) extant Mezza Mandolina kept in the Bargagli collection in Florence. (You can download Old Italian Lace from here)

In my researching I found that all texts cite Parasole in one text or another of hers. Unfortunately extant Parasole texts are extremely rare and while out of copyright, are part of private and museum collections and are not yet in the public domain. The German version of a 1616 text can be found here but there are no patterns for Mezza Mandolina. One librarian at the Smithsonian Museum told me that they plan to scan their rare texts and put them online in the future, this is exciting as they have four Parasole texts in their collections.

The tiny text Origine ed uso delle Trine a Refe has a rather complex pattern for embroidering Mezza Mandolina from Parasole's Pretiosa gemma delle virtuose donne, reprinted by Luchino Gargano in Venice, 1600 - you can see it here. I'm not sure how you would manage something so complex on netting but then, I don't have any experience in doing it!

Enza decided to see if she could reproduce the Mezza Mandolina pattern from the Bronzino portrait. She had some good results which she shared with me but asked me to wait until she could perfect her technique and she has just sent me this photo of her results:

She has written of her adventures on her website (click on Mezza Mandolina - text in Italian) and she also found this extant example of Mezza Mandolina from the late 19th century in the National Museum of Abruzzo.

Does anyone know anything else about Mezza Mandolina? Please leave a comment below.

Thanks to Enza for sharing her photo and adventures with us!

To read a follow-up post for this subject, click here.