An arm rests on a wooden loom, the warp stretched and the shuttle lying on the woven cloth, a basket of yarn cones beside.

Textiles and clothing

Weaving

The loom is an ancient and perfect machine. Two sets of threads — the warp running lengthwise, the weft passing back and forth across the width — interlace according to geometric rules that can be very simple or highly complex, and out of that lattice the cloth is born. Weaving is one of the founding crafts of human culture, and in Tuscany it is an art that spans millennia: from the medieval woollen cloth that made the fortune of Firenze, to the fourteenth-century silks of Lucca, to the contemporary artistic weaving that lives on in a few workshops of authorship.

A cobbled street in a stone village, a loom and a basket of yarn visible through an open door, wooded mountains behind.

Where

Where it is practised in Tuscany

In Tuscany weaving has very strong historic geographies. Prato has been the Italian capital of textiles since the Middle Ages: its Arte della Lana was one of the most powerful guilds in fourteenth-century Europe, and today the Prato district — which extends into the surrounding municipalities as well — is the leading Italian centre for wool processing, with thousands of firms and a global specialism in regenerated cloth and carded wool. Lucca has an equally ancient tradition in silk: from the Middle Ages the merchants of Lucca traded silks across the Mediterranean, and some historic manufacturers still produce damasks, brocades and high-end furnishing fabrics. Firenze has a vocation for artistic weaving and high fashion. The Casentino in the Arezzo area is the land of lana casentino, a felted, beaten cloth traditionally used for coats and cloaks. Pistoia had historic production of wool and cotton, reduced today but still alive.

Two wooden shuttles, bobbins wound with coloured yarns, a loom reed, shears and a cloth with a geometric pattern.

How

The techniques of the craft

The techniques define different families of cloth. Plain weaving (tabby, twill, satin) is the basis of every flat fabric; jacquard weaving — on a specialised loom — produces complex designs within the body of the cloth itself, with damasks and brocades that dress palaces and high-end houses. Handloom weaving survives in a few workshops of authorship and is a tool of contemporary textile research, of artistic rug-making and of luxury furnishing fabrics. Yarns are chosen by fibre (wool, silk, cotton, linen, cashmere, mohair), by twist and by fineness. Dyeing is a related craft that lives alongside weaving — natural colours (woad, madder, cochineal, indigo, weld) or stable synthetics — and one that in Prato has a well-established tradition.

A woman weaves striped cloth at a large wooden loom, in front of shelves of yarn cones sorted by colour.

Now

The craft today

Doing it today means standing in an enormous industrial sector (Prato turns over billions) alongside a niche but vital artisan segment. The historic manufacturers live on supplying high fashion, luxury furnishing and contract work for fine hotels and restaurants. Artistic handweaving lives on art commissions, galleries and independent designers. The challenge for the sector is environmental sustainability (the textile chain is among the most damaging in the world), traceability of supply chains and quality against the pressure of low-cost Asian production.

The producers of this craft

No producer of this craft has yet joined the MANUARTI network. This list opens when the first one does.

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