History of Textiles 2. Textile decoration from the Baroque era to the Empire period

Teacher: Lorenzo Pesci - Individual module of "Historical Tailoring, Costume and Performing (biannual course)"

The course aim is to illustrate not only the ways in which a decorative theme which has characterised textile production through the ages – that is, flowers and plant motifs – has assumed different meanings in different historical eras but also how taste and the idea of ‘fashion’ have evolved through the centuries, both in the clothing sector, where products are generally characterised by small-sized motifs in fanciful colours, and in furnishings, where the necessarily larger patterns retain decidedly more ‘classical’ colour nuances.

The material presented is paradigmatic of the best of (above all Italian) textile production; for the most part, this vast iconographic repertoire is in the form of slides projected in the classroom but it also includes a selected sample collection of period products: church vestments and paraments and textile fragments from the Fondazione Lisio historic archives.