A gorgeous morning greeted us today, and we headed to Deruta at 9:30. We visited a huge ceramic/pottery outlet, and then the Grazia ceramic factory and museum. At the factory we strolled through many showrooms, then had a tour of the factory showing the process including hand-painting of the pottery pieces.
Then it was on to Canarra where we visited a hand weaving studio owned by Lusciana Franchi. She and her husband are teachers - he is an artist and teaches art, while she teaches music. She has produced an incredible number of items to sell in her shop, and all are hand woven. Some of the silk she weaves with was dyed by Ildico, our teacher for the dyeing workshop earlier in the tour. All her weaving is done with old wooden looms which are on display.
Lusciana lead us to the nearby town of Bevagna, a small village that puts on a Medieval fair each year in early June. The townspeople compete with each other in contests of cooking, crafts, beer making etc, and all must be done in the manner and using materials available in that olden time. When we got to the village we were led to a small silk museum. (Bevagna and the area used to be well-known for its silk which it supplied to Florence.) The museum houses an INCREDIBLE machine for spinning silk into skeins so it is ready to weave. First silk cocoons are boiled and 1 strand of the thread is pulled out of the cocoon. Five of these threads are put together on a winder and put on spools. Then the big machine takes over and spins the threads from the spools. This is the only such machine in the world, and pre-dates a similar water-powered one designed by DaVinci. The machine is as big as a small room, and was human powered. Upstairs the skeins are measured out and put on the loom dating from 1300 or so.
After our amazement at the spinner, we wandered up the alley and saw a group of fellows practicing for the beer-making competition. They used 2 round stones to grind some barley, and were heating water for the beer over an open fire in the corner. Our next stop was the Taselli Cashmere Shop where we got a necktie as a gift for our host, Gianni, whose birthday is tomorrow.
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