Damask and Lampas in Lorsica

You pass Chiavari and Lavagna, and following the S.S. 225 state road you come to the Val Fontanabuona. Beyond Monleone di Cicagna, we come to Lorsica, one of the region's main silk-producing towns.

Following the directions on a simple sign which states 'Damasks at 30 meters', you make your way along a series of little stairways and narrow alleyways to the stone house where the De Martini family has been making damasks and lampas upholstery cloths of rare beauty on turn-of-the-century jacquard looms since 1910.

This little business is run by women.  'Three of us work on the looms: my sister-in-law Clelia, my grand-daughter Stefania and myself', says Amelia De Martini, aged seventy-seven, 'we start in the morning and work right through to the evening when the sun sets. 

It is slow and meticulous work that requires a lot of attention and patience.  There are fifteen thousand threads in a four-foot length of curtain and we pass them all through the heddles, counting them one by one.  It takes great patience.  We buy raw yarn by the skein and send it to be dyed in Milan.  Then we put it onto spools that are used for the warp.  The threads are passed eight at a time to the loom, one by one in the heddles and five by five in the comb'.

The eight looms, which are part mechanised and part manual, the spooler with the skeins of thread, the machine which makes the bobbins that are mounted on the loom and the beam to prepare the warp are industrial archaeological museum pieces.

And it is impossible not to fall under the spell of the rhythmic movement of the shuttle which uses gold and silver threads to create the minute design of the lampas bees on dark blue backgrounds or the delicate motifs of flowers and leaves on the damasks.  These traditional motifs while never changing are always different.  This is art, poetry and harmony with all the essence of times long past.

De Martini Family, Via Scaletta 78, Lorsica, Tel. 0185 977302.