Articolo disponibile anche in: Italian
To high tech products and instruments, the women of Tavarnelle prefer the art of embroidery: not just any lace but the most famous in the world.
Young girls and women from Chianti grow up with a needle and thread in hand thanks to their grandmothers, heiresses of a heritage of knowledge that has raised lace made in Tavarnelle to a global level, that preferred by Hollywood stars.
There are few left of the embroiderers who made “Punto Tavarnelle” famous. They want to pass the baton to make known, give value to, and save the lace which is currently guarded as a work of art in the “Museo di Arte Sacra” (The museum of holy art) in Tavarnelle (at the Pieve di San Pietro in Bossolo) and at the Salvatore Ferragamo museum in Florence.
Techniques and secrets of embroidery are taught and transmitted with patience every Monday. Here is where passion meets the curious glances of young girls and the expert hands of the embroiderers.
The lace is a technique created at the beginning of the 20th century by a nun and unites and connects great Tuscan art and high feminine artistry; treasures of an art and a profession that have contributed to give value to and raise the prestige of the Chianti territory.
This embroidery has occupied, impassioned and given work to hundreds of women for a century: grandmothers, mothers, daughters who transmitted their secrets from house to house, giving life to real artisanal works of art that have sold, promoted, and exported Tavernelle embroidery to the whole world. Even Ferragamo, the well known fashion house, in the period before World War II when leather was scarce, began to invest in Tavarnelle embroidery, to the point where they created shoes adorned by this lace.
And thus, the able hands of the Tavarnelle embroiderers had the opportunity to create for international cinema stars such as Liz Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, Jackie Kennedy, and princesses and women of high society.