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ITALIA
Lace Museums and Lace permanent Exhibits
Sansepolcro
Lace Museum
Piazza Garibaldi, 1
Saturday: 4.00pm - 7.00pm; Sunday: 9.30am -12.00am / 4.00pm - 7.00pm.
This little museum is open also by appointment.
In the foreground: Lace Museum.
In the ground floor: "Spazio del Merletto" Lace School.
Info.
tel.0575/720298.
Some works of the Lace School:
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Lace arrived in Sansepolcro at the end of XIX Century, brought by Amalia Gelli, called Dalila. She had learnt it from a belgian sister during a time of detention in a female prison.
After some time Adele and Ginna Marcelli learnt from "Dalila" the most important sitches of lace and they became soon very expert.
Their passion brought them to approach to the other italian lace: the Pescocostanzo, L'Aquila, Genova and Milano ones and certainly the french and flanders ones.
First they studied than they began the production that had a great success in Sansepolcro and in the rest of Italy.
The premature death of Adele, in 1912, doesn't stop the burning activity of the school that both sisters had founded. The school had a great social and economic importance for the High Valley of Tiber.
During those years the quality of Sansepolcro Lace got better thanks the good hand of Ginna's husband as designer, Domenico Petri, of whom we still have two catalogues of sketches and many tissue-papers.
The industrial revolution brought the crises of handicraft and also of the "School of bobbin lace" of Adele and Ginna Marcelli.
The interest about lace, in Sansepolcro, had a revival about 20 years ago, thanks to the "Biennale Internazionale" and to the activity of the Cultural Association "Il Merletto nella città di Piero". This association was born in 1996 with the aim to revalue and to spread the art of bobbin lace: for this reason they still carry out courses of lace and embroidery.
In the same year the administration of Sansepolcro made a permanent lace exhibition dedicated to the work of Adele and Ginna Marcelli.
Instruments
Sansepolcro Lace is made on a round and flat pillow which stands on a "Trestle" and can turn around on itself to follow the drawing of the lace.
Cardboard, pins and a crochet hook are the other instruments for the realisation of the lace, together with the wood bobbins. The number of the bobbins changes with the drawing, but they are at least 4.
Traditionally we use the linen thread, but can also use silk, cotton and gold or silver thread.
Sansepolcro Lace is very different from the other, thanks to the drawings, wich remind us of animals and plants.
Also the instruments we use to make lace are different from the instruments used in the rest of Italy.
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