A Museum School for Lovers of This Precious Fabric

Lisio Silk Foundation

Four-hundred antique fabrics, 200 Lisio fabrics, drawings and cartoons,
velvet looms, silk and gold brocades and autograph letters from Gabriele
D'Annunzio to Giuseppe Lisio. These are some of the items on the list of
treasures housed in this museum-archive founded in 1971.
In 1882, at the age of 22, Giuseppe Lisio left his birth place,
Roccamonepiano, in the province of Chieti, to find work in a famous silk
mill of Milan, the Luigi Osnago company, where he was employed as a
travelling salesman. After having gained experience he founded the
"Tessiture Riunite" Company in Milan (1905-1923), and in 1906 he opened a
"trading house especially dedicated to the reproduction and sale of artistic
fabrics of every kind" at via dei Fossi 27 in Florence. He wished to revive
the splendor of the art of silk making and began by rebuilding the home of a
14th Century silk merchant. He then transferred the weaving mill to Milan,
at via Manzoni 41, and founded a laboratory-school at via Vicentina.
Gabriele D'Annunzio called him the "weaver of all colors". However, in the
1940s, Lisio closed all the centers of his activity.
The purpose of the foundation is to collect his work. This includes
organizing specialization courses for experts, students, officials of the
Monuments and Fine Arts Office, textile restorers, historians and textile
specialists. These are attended mostly by foreigners and their purpose is to
design jacquard fabrics (damask fabric); the identification, analysis and
cataloguing of the various fabrics; their preservation and restoration, and
the design and implementation of computer-aided textile design.

via Benedetto Fortini 143
50125 Florence
Tel.: 055-6801340
Fax: 055-680436

Publication Date: 2002-10-06
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