«I don’t think technology and artificial intelligence, which depress the human aspects of life, will save us, I think instead forms of artistic craftsmanship will, such as the underwear and corsetry of my grandmother Adalgisa and my mother Ada from which La Perla was born, or like the rust woodblock print typical of Romagna, a heritage of the Made in Italy tradition to be recovered and valued on international markets by exploiting the partnership between the uniqueness of artisan know-how and the appeal of the big names in high fashion». This is how Alberto Masotti, former patron of La Perla and president of FFRI-Fondazione Fashion Research Italy, presents «Future tradition. The Romagna press between art and craft».
An exhibition that until 2 July can be visited in the former corsetry factory in via del Fonditore in Bologna – since 2015 the headquarters of the non-profit organization created by Masotti to recover the memory and archives of Italian fashion – where unique pieces are now on display of scarves, fabrics and bags printed with the ancient technique of hand-engraved and rust-inked wood matrix.
Crafts fly to relaunch SMEs
While yet another news of deep crisis and redundancies arrives for the La Perla brand, after the transfer of ownership into the hands of the Dutch holding company Tennor of the financier Lars Windhorst, Masotti tries to help the relaunch of small Italian artisan realities with an exhibition dedicated to beauty of an ancient poor art, adopted in the 17th century in the Romagna countryside to imitate the precious French printed silks and adorn the cattle on the occasion of the holidays with hemp drapes decorated with local peasant images (roosters, ears, vine shoots). «We stayed in a dozen companies between Forlì-Cesena, Rimini and Ravenna to carry on this ancient trade – says Emanuele Francioni, president of the Associazione Stampatori Tele Romagnole, partner of the FRRI initiative -. The association was born in 1997 to protect the quality of the handmade product today as it was done centuries ago, with wooden stamps carved by us, traditional natural colors and the mallet to beat the mold on the fabric then dried on rods and ironed with a mangle”.
The leap into the world of fashion
Their workshops are living museums to visit not only to enjoy forgotten rhythms and gestures, in a suspended time, but to understand that true sustainability has little to do with ESG claims and the planting of trees to offset emissions and chemical treatments : not even a wooden mold is thrown away, it is reused and re-carved until it becomes an archive piece and a rusty iron scrap is transformed into color to make high-end prints that last for centuries. In family factories handed down from generation to generation. “A few months ago Masotti arrived – continues Francioni – and he spurred us to take a leap into the fashion industry: we are ready, we have resisted with perseverance for decades to save tradition and as Romagna we like impossible challenges”.
It is in the artist’s scarves (“which I call love scarves”, Masotti remarks twice) exhibited at FFRI that one fully grasps the uniqueness of the patient art of rust printing, with imperfections in the seams of the drawings which are the “ trademark” to appreciate the originality of the hand-made, explains Giuseppe Pascucci, seventh generation of the workshop of the same name in Gambettola (Forlì Cesena). And it is the same absorbent papers on which the artisans work with pads and fabrics that become works of art to hang on the walls.