The Prato Textile Museum: the history of the textile industry

In the English writer Iris Origo’s fine book The Merchant of Prato, dedicated to Francesco Datini, an extraordinary merchant active in the 14th century, the author writes, “It was once said in Prato that if anyone cared to look under the foundations of the city walls they would find a bioccolo of wool there. Indeed, from the 12th century to the present, the city’s fortunes have risen and fallen according to the course of the wool market.” In these few lines the writer was describing the reality of Prato, a Tuscan city that has tied its economic fortunes to textile manufacturing since the Middle Ages. Prato is a center of textile industry and craftsmanship that has maintained its cultural and productive identity over the centuries, becoming one of the world’s most important hubs in the sector. These characteristics of exceptionality and professionalism are also reflected in the splendid Textile Museum opened in Prato in 1997.

The first collection nucleus was formed in 1975 following a large donation of fabric fragments dating between the 14th and 18th centuries by collector Loriano Bertini, destined for the “Tullio Buzzi” Technical Industrial Institute. Other important donations and purchases followed in subsequent years, including abstract textiles designed by Henry Moore and given by the artist, textiles designed by Gio Ponti, Indian fabrics and more. Today the Textile Museum’s holdings consist of a vast collection, the most important in Italy on the genre and among the most prestigious in Europe, to which belong craft and industrial artifacts of various origins, materials and eras.

In the evocative location of theformer Cimatoria Campolmi, among the oldest factories in Prato, this huge collection has been housed since 2003, whose itinerary offers a unique panorama of the evolution of techniques, tools and materials used in textiles. There are also a number of archaeological fragments here, examples of which are the splendid polychrome fringe in camelid wool, datable between 200 B.C. and 100 B.C., composed of tassels in the shape of female figures and produced by the proto-Nazca culture and coming from Peru; and some fragments of tapestries from Egypt, including one in wool and linen with decorative plant motifs and human figures, pertaining to the Coptic culture and to be dated around the fourth century A.D.

The itinerary continues with works from theItalian silk industry at the turn of the 14th and 15th centuries, a time when Lucca’s workshops were among the most prestigious, while from the Renaissance period it is mainly Florentine and Venetian manufactures that are represented, with precious velvets and brocades. Also rich is the sampling of weavings from all over Europe and beyond, the result of virtuoso collaboration between the artists who supplied the design and the embroiderers who translated it onto fabric. Later, however, are printed textiles, which Europe knew from the first half of the 17th century only through the mercantile activity of the Dutch, French and English East India Companies. From India poured into the old continent a brilliant universe of lively designs and vivid color combinations, unknown to Europeans, who did not master the mordants necessary for fixing colors and allowing printed fabrics to undergo washing.

Also coming from outside Europe is a considerable collection of textiles and garments made in India, Indonesia, Yemen, South America, China and Japan, accompanied by imaginative decorations and symbolism, evidence of the value of textile art as a social tool of communication.

In the nineteenth century, on the other hand, Prato’s textile production found fortune in the modern era, when the processing of straw to make “fioretti,” wide-brimmed hats demanded by the American market, assumed values of excellence. Prato’s great textile industrial fortune is suggested in the museum itinerary through the collection of sample books of historic city companies, which show the evolution of taste and fashion over time.

The contemporary era is accompanied by the incursions of artists into the field of textiles: in addition to the aforementioned Moore and Ponti, specimens made by Raoul Dufy and Thayaht, and in more recent times by Giò Pomodoro and Bruno Munari, artists who opened up to textile technique to essay its values of expressiveness and creativity, are also present in the museum.

But the Prato Textile Museum holds much more, such as the machinery used in the industry, artistic prints from various eras that show the alternation of fashions and styles in clothing, and clothing and accessories that bear witness to the evolution of costume from the 16th century to the present day, creating a unique museum.

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