Rosina, Margherita. "Wartime Fabrics in the Historical Archives of Como
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Rosina, Margherita. "Wartime fabrics in the historical archives of Como weavers and in the collections of the Fondazione Antonio Ratti." Fashion, Society, and the First World War: International Perspectives. Ed. Maude Bass-Krueger, Hayley Edwards-Dujardin and Sophie Kurkdjian. London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2021. 151–162. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 23 Sep. 2021. <http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781350119895.ch-010>. Downloaded from Bloomsbury Collections, www.bloomsburycollections.com, 23 September 2021, 09:59 UTC. Copyright © Selection, editorial matter, Introduction Maude Bass-Krueger, Hayley Edwards- Dujardin, and Sophie Kurkdjian and Individual chapters their Authors 2021. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher, and provide a link to the Creative Commons licence. 1 0 Wartime fabrics in the historical archives of Como weavers and in the collections of the Fondazione Antonio Ratti M a r g h e r i t a R o s i n a Th e archives of Como manufacturers, which have never been studied before, and sample books held at the textile museum Museo Studio del Tessuto (MuST), which is part of the Fondazione Antonio Ratti (FAR), in Como, highlight how high-level Italian silk production never ceased during the war. 1 Th is essay focuses on silk fabrics, since they are the production of excellence of the Como district as well as the main fi eld covered by Antonio Ratti’s collecting practice. Th e supremacy of France in the silk weaving trade remained undisputed for at least three centuries and was still unchallenged in the early twentieth century. By the start of the First World War, Italian silk mills were making good-quality products that could have, indeed, competed with those produced in Lyon. For what concerned woolen fabrics, though, Italy was still dependent on imports. Th e most authoritative women’s magazine in Italy during the period of World War I, Margherita , r e p o r t e d i n October 1914 that: “whilst our silk industry has made surprising progress, to the point of seriously competing with Lyon itself, the same cannot be said—at least not for the moment—of woollen fabrics. For these, the supremacy of France, Germany and Britain remains undisputed.”2 Italian silk fabrics for clothing were produced mainly in the Como area, where many medium-sized manufactures were in a position to meet internal demand and attract orders from abroad. Historical texts on weaving in Como and orders found among the few extant paper documents held in private Como archives confi rm this.3 Th e biggest part of the work was carried out in the surrounding area, where families owned looms enabling them to work at home. On the eve of the First World War, fi rms like Bressi 151 152 Fashion, Society, and the First World War owned 250 handlooms and 25 Jacquards; 4 Casnati had 360 Jacquard looms that produced plain silks of the most varied qualities, had salespersons around the world, and won prizes at world exhibitions;5 Rosasco employed about 500 people in the production of plain silks and linings; 6 and Luigi Taroni specialized in high fashion garments made with Brianza silk on mechanical as well as manual looms.7 In fact, the First World War was benefi cial to silk manufacturers: Many of the looms of the world, which have heretofore given so much of their time to the weaving of beautiful stuff s for women to wear, are delegated to the sterner tasks of making uniform materials. Until now, the main business of weavers has been to dress women; men were clothed in what was left . Now men, the warriors of the world, must be clothed in such a way as to resist cold and wet, and women must be clothed in that which he does not need. Th is means a revolution in the making of textiles, and from this revolution, as with other revolutions, there will undoubtedly be many benefi ts. Since man needs wool to keep him warm and dry, woman is requested—in fact she is in eminent danger of being summarily ordered—to wear silk.8 Wool was a raw material saved worldwide for soldiers at the front. 9 Silk became, out of necessity, one of the materials that could be most widely employed. Th is was particularly true towards the end of the war, Margherita also observed: “One of the principal consequences of the cornering of wool by the army has been the democratization of silk. Grownups and kids adopt it for dresses and cloaks, whilst wool is used only for trimmings.” 10 It is diffi cult to get a comprehensive view of wartime Como production as none of the manufacturers operating at that time and mentioned earlier are still active today. Th e surviving production archives covering those years are very few and incomplete. Th is makes it impossible to give an exhaustive account of what was being woven in the Como area or to make comparisons in terms of quality or quantity with the corresponding output in Lyon. Th e textile samples considered by this research only represent what can be dated with certainty from the period of the First World War, originating from the few sample books found. Th e FISAC silk-mill wartime production Among the silk mills operating in Como during the First World War, one of the most important was FISAC (Fabbriche Italiane di Seterie A. Clerici Sa). Th is fi rm was established in 1906, following the closure of Sas Braghenti Clerici & Co, which had been founded in 1890 and converted into Fabbriche Italiane di Seterie Clerici Braghenti & Co in 1902.11 What remains today of the FISAC production archive is divided between Guarisco spa in Grandate, which took over the fi rm’s premises at the time of its closure, and the Fondazione Antonio Ratti, which acquired a substantial number of its sample Wartime Fabrics in Archives and Collections 153 books. Since the corresponding paper documentation is unfortunately patchy, this material cannot be fully placed within its proper context. FISAC’s production consisted mainly of plain and fi gured fabrics for womenswear, in pure silk or in silk and cotton blends. Th ese range from large fl oral patterns, in pastel shades or sharp color contrasts, to small brocaded motifs on taff etas. Numerous striped samples are also present; many of them feature a black-and-white contrast. Th is was one of the most fashionable trends of the 1910s, as witnessed by the journals and photographs of the era. 12 It is diffi cult to say to what extent the war caused changes in production. Th ere are no sensible diff erences between what was produced in the period between the beginning of the century and the outbreak of war and what can be gathered from the textile records of wartime years. Th e FISAC color range between 1915 and 1918 continued to be just as extensive and rich with bright colors. Th is contradicts the news, as reported several times by the magazine Margherita , of a shortage of the dyes necessary to the textile industry. It also goes against the observations made by Jacqueline Field, who noticed a change in textile production in the United States due to a lack of dyes that had until then been imported from Germany. 13 Th e Como silk industry does not appear to have been aff ected by this problem. Th e consumption of silk for women’s fashion only represented a small section of the market since the articles made from this precious material were aimed for an elite market. 14 Th e amount of dyes required was therefore limited and could be found even under such exceptional circumstances as war. Nor does the war seem to be refl ected in FISAC’s output, which shows no hints of patriotism. Only the emphatic presence of black cr ê pe samples in diff erent weights may, perhaps, be related to the veils worn by women in mourning, whose numbers dramatically increased during the confl ict. Parravicini & Co. Another extant archive is that of the fi rm Parravicini & Co., now held by Industria Serica Taroni in Grandate. Parravicini had its headquarters in via Morazzone in Como. When Taroni was founded in 1921, it took over the Parravicini factory and also acquired its archives. Parravicini’s earliest contremarque books date from 1913 and show that the fi rm’s output was based on good-quality yarn-dyed silk in a broad color range, although most of its production remained confi ned to black and to neutral shades. As in the case of FISAC, black and white striped samples oft en appear. Th e books cover all the war years, highlighting orders from Italy and abroad which show that trade was both brisk and international. In 1915, orders were placed by Ambrogio Spada, which had offi ces both at Lierna (Como) and in Buenos Aires; in February 1916, orders were placed by Aldermanbury & Co. of London; in November of that year, orders came from Baily & Huber, London, for miscellaneous pieces of paillette glac é in a 154 Fashion, Society, and the First World War wide variety of shades. Another London customer was Angel & Spiro, “Manufacturers and Silk Merchants,” who bought numerous items in many color variants from Parravicini. A careful examination of the surviving contremarque books clearly shows that Parravicini’s production, which has unfortunately survived only in tiny samples, presented no particular wartime novelties. From 1913, however, heavy dark blue or black satins began to appear, characterized by highly particular selvedges, which sometimes were in nuanced colors or striped bands.