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“The Bandera Embroidery. The art of painting
with a needle” is a booklet that the Association has published
to celebrate its first ten years of existence and to offer to
everybody, and not just to the enthusiasts of this embroidery
technique, the history of a refined and charming form of
piedmontese artisan craft.
“Bandera” is a
name that has now become familiar to many embroiderers, but its
origin is very old, medieval, at a time in Chieri, where the
cotton industry had an enormous success that is by now 800 years
old, the bandera cloth was born: a strong cloth made initially
for the clothing industry and for household linen, and that in
the XVIII century it turned out to be the ideal base for the
embroideries that everybody now loves and admires and that has
inherited the name from this cloth.
Throughout the
pages of this booklet there is a succession of people, works,
materials, in a very interesting intertwining of the social and
cultural aspect, and that, with a pleasant and captivating
parlance, escorts the reader not only to a an embroidery
technique, but also to a long period of the history of Piedmont.
There is no
shortage of precious works embroidered with the Bandera
technique, that are each and everyone an historic example with a
local connection, for example the bedroom of Count Benso di
Cavour in Santena, and the bedroom of Counts Tuninetti of
Pertengo, once set in villa Moglia, a splendid example of
nineteenth century architecture in the hills of Chieri.
The whole does
not lose contact with reality and practicality, and then in the
text suggestions appear coming from a long experience, that
tell you how to handle the cloth in the proper direction, or
when and how to utilise the frame, or the correct technique of
tracing the designs, so that the creativity and skill of the
embroiderer can be revealed at its best, as it was happening in
the elite circle of the time, when embroidery was the most
important activity of the ladies, to which they were encouraged
from childhood.
The text, of 32 pages, is available at the Association’s head
office. |
