A Thread Stretching from Afar. Orenburg Shawls at the Textile Museum of Prato

Among the venues of the project “Interweavings of History. Orenburg Shawls from Prato to the Urals” where our products were not just shown but included in the main exhibition, special attention is deserved by the Museum of Textiles and Looms with the exhibition “A Thread Stretching from Afar”.

Eight centuries of Tuscan textile craft

The textile craft of Tuscany has its roots in the distant past: it originated more than 800 years ago in a medieval settlement of craftsmen. Remarkably, this settlement has survived to this day, and over so many centuries the craft has not died out but continued to develop. Local craftsmen honour the ancient traditions of spinning and fabric processing, and the craft remains relevant today.

History of the museum

The museum was founded in 1975 thanks to the collector Loriano Bertini. He collected more than 600 themed exhibits and donated all this wealth to the city free of charge. On this basis the museum collection was formed — through the joint efforts of the Prato municipality, the Buzzi Institute Alumni Association, the “Tullio Buzzi” Technological Institute, the tourism promotion department and a number of trade organisations. This is how the only museum to date dedicated to the art of spinning and weaving came into being.

Today the Textile Museum's exhibition features:

• old fabrics — both fragments and whole pieces;
• equipment for spinning and processing fabrics — from samples from the oldest manufactories to quite modern machines;
• a section devoted to the technologies of chemical dyeing of fabrics at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries;
• a section on the modern textile industry.

The latter also has an educational purpose — it preserves and popularises the heritage of the Prato textile industry. It operates under an agreement between the museum and textile manufacturers of Tuscany.

A thread from the Apennines to the Urals

The textile craft is in a sense a “distant relative” of down knitting, so the theme of the exhibition turned out to be related too. The museum's staff and management had enormous scope for creativity, and their imagination and work were embodied in the exhibition “A Thread Stretching from Afar”.

The basis of the concept is spinning. The exhibition tells the story of wool and down thread from the Apennines to the Urals.

The exhibition clearly shows how this thread “stretching from afar” connects two regions — geographically distant, but close in their historical crafts, which both in the Orenburg Region and in Prato people try to preserve and develop despite everything.

Orenburg down shawls did not look out of place at all among the fabrics and looms and, as expected, aroused great interest and sincere delight among visitors. The metaphor of a thread connecting regions was perfectly apt: guests greatly appreciated this imaginative move by the Textile Museum staff.

We are glad that, despite the thousands of kilometres between us and the difference in mentality, the people of Orenburg and caring, talented people from Prato are united in their desire to preserve and develop the oldest crafts that run like a red thread through the history of our lands. Sincere thanks to the staff and management of the Museum of Textiles and Looms for their assistance and unconventional creative approach to creating this wonderful exhibition.