"Giuditta Brozzetti" Textile Workshop

Our story has been extraordinary, and wonderful. A story of women.

The ancient Umbrian art of weaving and looming took new life at the beginning of the twentieth century through the agency of some Perugian women of high culture and with a progressive outlook. Tablecloths, wool cloths, tassels and borders "Perugian style" began once more to be produced by the resurrected textile workshops.

Giuditta Brozzetti was the headmaster of Perugia's elementary schools. She used to drive her horse and carriage all around the province of Umbria, and would listen to the chatter of the handlooms that came from the farmhouses. Perugia, at the turn of the century, had retained the glorious traditions of weaving and looming. Giuditta Brozzetti grafted the craftsmanship of the women of Perugia with the movement of women's emancipation that was beginning to take shape in this period, and gave these women the opportunity to work and earn their financial independence.

In 1921 Giuditta Brozzetti started her own textile factory, in collaboration with a shop that sold the textile products. And sell they did. The orders came in from Rome, Milan, and from those cities in the United States that had closer ties to Europe (New York, Boston, Philadelphia).

One of the most important workshops among these was the one started by Giuditta Brozzetti, founded in 1921. Known and admired for the extreme adherence and fidelity of the artwork of her "Perugian Tablecloths" to their originals, (seen in museums or in the paintings of the 14th and 15th century), Mrs. Giuditta reproduced the artwork and patterns of some of the loveliest cloths from the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance as well. Among them, the "Settesoli" ("Seven suns"), taken from a Byzantine drape of the 13th century ­Museum of the Basilica of Saint Francis, Assisi; the "Araldica" ("The heraldry"), reproduced from a Byzantine cloth of the 14th century ­San Giorgio Collection, Rome; the "Leoni a Medaglione" ("Lions on the Medallion"), from the drape painted in 13th century fresco ­Church of Santa Maria Infraportas, Foligno; the "Re Salomone" ("King Salomon"), inspired by the mantle of King Salomon in a fresco by Piero della Francesca ­Church of Saint Francis, Arezzo.

In this work of restoration, of high artistic and cultural content, she availed of the cooperation of a very great artist: Bruno da Osimo, one of the greatest engravers and xylographers of his time.

Another merit to be ascribed to Giuditta Brozzetti is the rescue, through her work, of a certain kind of weaving with pedal­operated looms made of wood that was typical of the countryside around Perugia; the cloths produced with this kind of looms are called "rustiche" ("rustic"), but they, too, have a tradition spanning hundreds of years (see "Detail of the singers" in a fresco by Sodoma, 1477-1549, in the cloister of the Abbey of Mount Oliveto Maggiore ­ Siena). Mrs. Giuditta, before founding her workshop, had already started collecting and selling those rustic cloths from the Umbrian countryside and in the small towns around Perugia. Thus, she had given a new impulse to this particular handicraft, which, for historical and social reasons, was disappearing. If we can still admire and use, not only the Perugian tablecloths, but also the "rustic" cloths, simple yet extremely pleasing and elegant, we owe it to the society "Giuditta Brozzetti" that has continued the work of rescue, restoration and preservation begun by its founder, against the growing difficulties that face nowadays the true handcrafts.

Seventy-eight years later, nine eighteenth century hand looms (the famous jacquard looms, patented by Vincenzi) still chatter and weave fabric in the old church of San Francesco delle Donne ("Women's Church of Saint Francis"). They give out a wonderful, even though limited, production: tablecloths, table centerpieces, tassels and borders.

Today, Clara Baldelli Bombelli, Giuditta Brozzetti's granddaughter, is the president of the cooperative society "Giuditta Brozzetti", while her daughter Marta works and manages the shop, together with two other young women artisans. Clara has studied at length the Byzantine textiles and drapes, and the vestments and fittings depicted in medieval frescoes. From these both a tradition and a memory are born.

Here these ancient patterns are born anew, woven with linen and cotton by the looms of this historical workshop.

History of San Francesco delle Donne

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