Italian Textile Tour - 2022
Greetings.
Years have elapsed since one of our time honoured road trips had chance to come to fruition.
Seven in fact since the last time we took a trip to Italy in search of industry: Report - - Italian Turbine Tour, Italy - June 2015. | Noteworthy Reports
This quick 2.5 day trip focused on the varying textile industries in northern Italy. As always, I’d been creating a map and routes etc for around two or three years with an industry focus and it turned out we probably needed at least 5 or 6 times the time we'd allocated.
Plans were laid to head over in June 2020, and if this could have happened, it was evident that we would have had a lot more successes as the Italians appear to have used the pandemic to somewhat get their act together.
That said, the majority what you see here is a product of desktop research (in foreign, cheers google translate) with the help of collaborators SammyDW and also Andy the Spicy egglet.
So, to the trip. Cregg, George and I picked up yet another disappointingly poor Opel Mokka at the aeropuerto and set about navigating the alpine foothills that are pockmarked with large and small textile mills, both operating and in a state of dereliction.
As always, Italy excels in cultivating extreme molto bene brambles, our lacerations this time were painful.
Our first port of call was a long abandoned silk worm cocoon mill or Filandra, still with machinery and silk worm cocoons aplenty
The cocoons look like little soft eggs, they’re held together by a soluble gum secreted by the silk worm who spins the silk to make a little egg house so that it can become a moth.
This mill processed the cocoons by the process of 'stoving' or 'stifling' in which the cocoons are heated, boiling the worm alive to loosen the fibres for spinning later down the line.
The next mill, or Filatura this time, concentrated on spinning the par boiled cocoons into actual silk fibres. The previous mill’s heating process loosened the gum so that machinery can unravel the individual fibre and reel it onto yarns.
As each cocoons filament is finished being reeled, a new fiber is twisted onto it, thereby forming one long, continuous thread. Silk is a fairly pricey material and evidently the processes that go into actually getting it from worm > knickers are pretty time consuming.
Next day after pizzaing, our attention turned to the numerous humongous Lanificio mills, which again roughly translates as ‘spinning’ however, some of these were so large that they encompassed the entire textile production process.
A good number of these were leads that I’d identified on street view, also, the little streetview car had been around in August so when mills had just become more derp looking or hadn’t had their shutters opened, we knew we could be onto a winner.
Mostly, we weren’t. A lot of our time was spent looking up and down rivers, round the back of people’s houses. Being looked at quizzically from windows and having hand gestures that only Italians could make, made in our general direction before beating hasty retreats back through undergrowth etc.
First was a mill that appeared to ‘make stuff’ as part of a larger empire of one of this valley’s most prolific names until about 2001. Indeed, in the largest town there was a huge complex bearing the name of this business that was absolutely buzzing with work, product and activity.
P.S driving slowly through towns and gawping at mills generally isn’t seen as acceptable by other Italian road users.
Another, ‘derp or not derp’ situation found us in the disused power production and boiler house bowels of a mill after scooting past some Latvian blokes loading up a lorry. A lot of the massive storage facilities appended to these seem to being used for just that.
As these buildings are generally located on tumbling glacial ravine style rivers, the levels in these mills are bonkers, in one I opened door and was greeted by a wall of rock with some shelves nailed to it, they’ll have several floors cascading down over the landscape, all very interesting and made for some confusing exploring.
Yet another, located in the most beautiful sleepy little hilltop town. This time packed to the rafters with the business’ stuff, sample suits, labels etc just left. Any machinery that isn’t tied down or specifically produced to fit in these buildings seems to be sold off (unlike Textile / Clothing Mill / Factory, Italy - June 2015. | European and International Sites)
This one still had a myriad of massive textile machinery, including a gloriously dated fabric inspection line.
Another, firmly on the tourist trail for a couple of years and somewhat worse off for it (cheers Sammy)
This one made handkerchiefs and other small items, obviously there isn’t really a market for these any longer.
Most of the good stuff had been chucked around or nicked unfortunately.
And that’s it for now, I’ll be posting some full reports when I get round to it.
Thanks for looking, and to these two idiots for some excellent fun.
Tour proudly sponsored by San Pellegrino S.P.A and Ichnusa Sardinian lager.
I'm about to sell my camera gear as it was such a ballache to take over there and lunk around. Mobile phone exploring from now on!
Greetings.
Years have elapsed since one of our time honoured road trips had chance to come to fruition.
Seven in fact since the last time we took a trip to Italy in search of industry: Report - - Italian Turbine Tour, Italy - June 2015. | Noteworthy Reports
This quick 2.5 day trip focused on the varying textile industries in northern Italy. As always, I’d been creating a map and routes etc for around two or three years with an industry focus and it turned out we probably needed at least 5 or 6 times the time we'd allocated.
Plans were laid to head over in June 2020, and if this could have happened, it was evident that we would have had a lot more successes as the Italians appear to have used the pandemic to somewhat get their act together.
That said, the majority what you see here is a product of desktop research (in foreign, cheers google translate) with the help of collaborators SammyDW and also Andy the Spicy egglet.
So, to the trip. Cregg, George and I picked up yet another disappointingly poor Opel Mokka at the aeropuerto and set about navigating the alpine foothills that are pockmarked with large and small textile mills, both operating and in a state of dereliction.
As always, Italy excels in cultivating extreme molto bene brambles, our lacerations this time were painful.
Our first port of call was a long abandoned silk worm cocoon mill or Filandra, still with machinery and silk worm cocoons aplenty
The cocoons look like little soft eggs, they’re held together by a soluble gum secreted by the silk worm who spins the silk to make a little egg house so that it can become a moth.
This mill processed the cocoons by the process of 'stoving' or 'stifling' in which the cocoons are heated, boiling the worm alive to loosen the fibres for spinning later down the line.
The next mill, or Filatura this time, concentrated on spinning the par boiled cocoons into actual silk fibres. The previous mill’s heating process loosened the gum so that machinery can unravel the individual fibre and reel it onto yarns.
As each cocoons filament is finished being reeled, a new fiber is twisted onto it, thereby forming one long, continuous thread. Silk is a fairly pricey material and evidently the processes that go into actually getting it from worm > knickers are pretty time consuming.
Next day after pizzaing, our attention turned to the numerous humongous Lanificio mills, which again roughly translates as ‘spinning’ however, some of these were so large that they encompassed the entire textile production process.
A good number of these were leads that I’d identified on street view, also, the little streetview car had been around in August so when mills had just become more derp looking or hadn’t had their shutters opened, we knew we could be onto a winner.
Mostly, we weren’t. A lot of our time was spent looking up and down rivers, round the back of people’s houses. Being looked at quizzically from windows and having hand gestures that only Italians could make, made in our general direction before beating hasty retreats back through undergrowth etc.
First was a mill that appeared to ‘make stuff’ as part of a larger empire of one of this valley’s most prolific names until about 2001. Indeed, in the largest town there was a huge complex bearing the name of this business that was absolutely buzzing with work, product and activity.
P.S driving slowly through towns and gawping at mills generally isn’t seen as acceptable by other Italian road users.
Another, ‘derp or not derp’ situation found us in the disused power production and boiler house bowels of a mill after scooting past some Latvian blokes loading up a lorry. A lot of the massive storage facilities appended to these seem to being used for just that.
As these buildings are generally located on tumbling glacial ravine style rivers, the levels in these mills are bonkers, in one I opened door and was greeted by a wall of rock with some shelves nailed to it, they’ll have several floors cascading down over the landscape, all very interesting and made for some confusing exploring.
Yet another, located in the most beautiful sleepy little hilltop town. This time packed to the rafters with the business’ stuff, sample suits, labels etc just left. Any machinery that isn’t tied down or specifically produced to fit in these buildings seems to be sold off (unlike Textile / Clothing Mill / Factory, Italy - June 2015. | European and International Sites)
This one still had a myriad of massive textile machinery, including a gloriously dated fabric inspection line.
Another, firmly on the tourist trail for a couple of years and somewhat worse off for it (cheers Sammy)
This one made handkerchiefs and other small items, obviously there isn’t really a market for these any longer.
Most of the good stuff had been chucked around or nicked unfortunately.
And that’s it for now, I’ll be posting some full reports when I get round to it.
Thanks for looking, and to these two idiots for some excellent fun.
Tour proudly sponsored by San Pellegrino S.P.A and Ichnusa Sardinian lager.
I'm about to sell my camera gear as it was such a ballache to take over there and lunk around. Mobile phone exploring from now on!
