As I recently entered the gate leading into the cloister of the 11th-century Church of San Giacomo de Muro Rupto (St. James in the Broken Wall), I noted the sign indicating the Laboratorio di San Francesco. I thought about those summer days decades ago when I brought our Giulia to that laboratorio (w0rkshop) here for the programs…
Due to cataracts, Signor Vittorio – age eighty-two – doesn’t have a needle in his hands to embroider these days. When I met him recently near the Assisi souvenir kiosk of his daughter, Maria Cristiana, he proudly showed me some of his treasured linen textiles decorated with the punto Assisi (the Assisi stitch) which he learned…
“There isn’t a day that I don’t have a needle in my hand,” Antonietta told me as we talked about her passione for the embroidery of the punto Assisi (the Assisi stitch). She grew up with a passion for the punto Assisi for her mother created textile masterpieces in this stitch. s a child, Antonietta watched her work and at…
As a child growing up in Assisi, craftsman of medieval stringed instruments, Luca Piccioni, would have been familiar with such instruments from an early age. School trips in elementary school would have included guided visits of the medieval fresco wonders in the 13th-century Basilica di San Francesco. Gazing at the 14th-century Simone Martini frescoes in…
The creative output of many Assisi artisans is owed to the inspiration of family members of past generations. And so it is for the assisano wood-carver, Rossano Rondoni, great-grandson of Domenico, art restorer, painter and photographer whose photograph reigns in Rossano’s bottega (workshop). Rossano’s grandfather, too, was a man of many talents and interests, including wood-working.…
Aspiring to write a few notes linking ancient Assisi artisan treasures to present artisan wonders, I decided that there would be no better place to start than right in the center of Assisi on the main piazza, Piazza del Comune. I’d start at the Zubboli bookshop (opened in 1870), Assisi’s “artisan centerpiece”…. …which faces the…
In Deruta, a sacred spot of the Middle Ages holds sacred treasures. In this small Umbria hilltown, a 14th-century Franciscan monastery now houses the first ceramics museum of Italy – founded in 1898 – displaying over 6000 maiolica masterpieces spanning four centuries: The museum’s first name, Museo artistico pei lavoranti in maiolica (Art Museum for Maiolica– workers), embodies…
We’re all so overwhelmed always by the innumerable art treasures ready to welcome us in magnificent churches, famous museums and in many a small chapel down side streets in medieval towns. But ever thought about all those not-to-be-seen treasures in the deposits of the great museums and those uncountable locked up churches and chapels, needing…
Deruta, an Umbria small hilltown south of Perugia….. …..is a veritable open-air museum peppered with maiolica touches in the piazzas, on the walls of homes, over shop entrances,in the backstreets and even in the public gardens just outside the medieval walls: Since the Middle Ages, the Umbrian hill town of Deruta has been a major…
In preparation for my ZOOM presentation May 8, 2021 on Deruta, I needed to see the Museo Regionale della Ceramica, but for now, that museum – like many – is closed due to COVID restrictions. Thanks to the assistance of a friend, I was able to talk to the Assessore alle Politiche Sociali, Cristina Canuti, who immediately offered…