About

In the 1930s the Italian Fascist regime founded a network of weaving workshops in Venetia, named ‘Tessorie Rurali', to support people living in the rural areas of the region and their traditional lifestyle. In these small workshops, peasant women produced fine, hand-woven textiles under the guidance of upper-middle-class women, experimenting with a range of locally produced fibres. In the same period, local designers such as Gegia Bronzini and Bice Lazzari, who remained prominent also after the end of the regime, were influenced by the broader socio-political context and involved with female Fascist organisations. In all these cases, traditional textile practices were being combined with contemporary experimentation and, as such, brought to the national art and design scene through exhibitions, magazines and trade fairs.

This PhD project will research the overlooked role played by women in the field of textiles in the Venetia region during the Fascist regime. Taking the materiality of textile objects and practices as a starting point, it will analyse the complex interaction of material, social and political dynamics that shaped women’s creative practices and the textiles they produced. In doing so, it aims to expand the current state of knowledge about women’s contribution to Italian design, as well as to shed light on the influence of the Fascist regime on women, rural culture and art and design. The thesis will also examine how these women moved their textile practice beyond the traditional domestic setting, negotiating a new public and commercial role between local and national culture, emancipation and control, tradition and innovation.

By highlighting how textiles developed through the interactions between different actors and socio-political forces, the thesis challenges the idea of creativity as the effort of a single person, instead conceiving of it as a dynamic process shaped by the interplay between materials, individuals and society.