La Romita and San Gemini, Italia

11-12 October, 2024

 

I signed up for another class at the Italian art school I like in Terni (state of Umbria) – here’s the website for La Romita:  www.laromita.org.

 

This was my third visit, fourth class; I was here last in autumn 2022.  It’s a great school with small workshops.  Thus far I’ve taken classes in collage techniques, watercolor, and pastel painting.  This class was in tapestry weaving.  I will admit, I do not have a lot of weaving experience, probably my last woven item was in the late 1980s when I was in my teacher certification program.  But I like textile arts, I’ve done a lot of quilting and painting on fabric, and sure, why not?

 

Plus one of my good friends, R, a former college roommate, is a weaver.  When I sent her the workshop info, that was her reaction: sure, why not?

 

So we signed up, and her husband (J) signed up as a non-workshop-fun-only attendee.  (My husband chose to stay in Tucson.)

 

I’ve written about the school previously and included photos of the exterior.  Here’s the 2022 blog post with a little history of the school, as well as photos of the buildings and the garden.  There’s also a short history of the town of San Gemini, once again the first hill town we visited again this year:  https://rollingluggagers.blogspot.com/2022/10/pandemic-diaries-italian-interlude-1-26.html

The interior of the school is just as beautiful, although not quite as old.  There are bathrooms with running water, something the monks didn’t have in the 1500s.  Nor did they have electric lights, radiators, wifi, or even hot showers.  Fortunately, we no longer live as the monks did, and we have access to all those things.

 

Two photos of my room – I had a double room to myself, so I pushed the two single beds together.  It just makes it easier for morning exercises so I don’t fall out.  Beautiful Italian antique furniture, and that desk/vanity/dry sink had a gorgeous marble tabletop!

 

Our first afternoon was in the studio, which is in the former chapel.  Yes, a couple of frescoes, some paintings, a copy of a Rubens etching – all very arty!  The general schedule is that the first day we get oriented, and the rest of the days we have morning excursions to different towns/cities/sites, come back for lunch, and spend the afternoon in the studio.  Some days we visit more distant towns and spend the entire day, coming back in time for dinner.  The studio is open 24 hours a day, though, so people can work in there whenever they like.

 

We also explored the exterior, including the lovely garden full of color, and the olive grove.  Some of the other students, several who are professional weavers and very experienced in natural dyes, found some mushrooms that could be used for a series of colors ranging from beige to yellow to almost green depending on what chemicals are added.  (Quick aside – we would be weaving with wool yarn, which needed to be dyed.  Different fibers need different chemicals added to the dye in order for the fiber to really absorb the dye and make the color permanent – the chemicals are called mordants.  Cotton, wool, linen, flax, and silk all need different mordants, and those different fibers not only absorb the dyes differently but each also produces different colors.  Also, dye is not like paint, where you can mix yellow and blue to get green.  Some dyes work like that, but some don’t – so the best way to get multiple colors is to dye them the light color first, and when dry the fiber is dyed with another color.  This is overdying.)

 

Anyway, next thing we know, this group of dyers are boiling up mushrooms, squeezing them out, and dyeing the yarn!  We only had two burners and two huge pots to boil the plant stuff to make the dye baths.  Big, heavy, and probably not great for tabletops on metal sawhorse-type props – so everything was moved to the downstairs print studio.  And suddenly we had a designated dyeing studio.

 

It was a bit funny, because our group of dyers seemed to find leaves, mushrooms, nuts or nutshells, I don’t know – everywhere we went, they were collecting vegetation and whatnot, and then boiling it to make dye.  I’ll show all the dyes later on, the colors are gorgeous, though many of the colors are definitely earthy, as one would expect from mushrooms, twigs, and such.

 

While our four to six people were busy making dyes, the rest of us (we were a total of twelve, including our instructor, her husband, and her 88 year old mother who was a sweetheart and game for anything!) set up our stuff, talked about weaving, and the general plan for our ten day workshop.  I told our instructor, Shelley, I had a sketch that I thought would make a nice tapestry.  Showed her my watercolor sketch, the clock of Spoleto which looks like the sun.

 

Well, Shelley was polite – she said that the clock was pretty, but probably not the best design for a beginning tapestry weaver.  It was too complicated, with too many curves and too many parts.  I might be able to weave part of it, but something simpler would be a better design for a first tapestry.

 

Okay, I could understand that, not a problem.  I would keep my eye out for an easier, more basic kind of design.  We were supposed to be looking for architectural features on which to base our designs, so okay, I could do that.

 

So the day after our arrival, as I said, our first hill town visit, was to San Gemini.  I’ll include a map of where we went at the end of all my blogs about Italy, but San Gemini is roughly 15 minutes from La Romita. 

 

Hill towns truly are that – towns built on hills, usually surrounded by wide walls for extra protection from invading forces.  The walls often include forts, or at least watchtowers.  Most of the hill towns still have the walls and buildings built during the Medieval era, even though some towns were inhabited even earlier, way back to the Etruscans who pre-date the Romans.  Yes, we are talking 2000-something years ancient OLD!

 

San Gemini has the traditional town built on the upper end of the hill top, with Medieval walls and a huge gate.  This neighborhood is La Rocca, the castle.  The lower end of the hill top is the area built during the Renaissance, so that is the “new” section of town.  Of course, there’s the very modern section, built in the last 100 years or so, outside the walled city.  We skip that, it’s not as much fun.

 

Because I’ve been to San Gemini before, I have my little route, and my friends decided to hang with me and go along the route.  We headed through the old (Medieval) gate with Shelley and her family, and I stopped to take a photo of the stone emblem of this neighborhood, a castle.  Since Shelley was right there, I asked if this would be a good design for a beginner-level tapestry, and she said yes, this would be great.  So voila, I had my design.

 

R, J, and I wandered uphill, looking at the buildings, the views, the various banners denoting this is the La Rocca section of town.  We visited a church or two, walked along the ramparts (the top of the walls), and explored at a leisurely pace.  I always take photos of the banners, and I especially liked one in particular, which eventually became the sketch for my design.

 

My usual practice is to have a cappuccino about 11ish, since our breakfast is early and we’re on the bus by 9 AM.  Well, my friends aren’t so much coffee drinkers, and R wanted to try gelato as we travelled around.  Who am I to say no to gelato?

 

The little café on this side of town turned out to have incredible gelato, one of the darkest and richest dark chocolates I’ve ever had!  Italians believe in more than one flavor of gelato per cup or cone, so I mostly go with a small cup of dark chocolate and coffee gelato.  (Piccola copa, cioccolata fondante i caffe, per favore.)  SO good!!!

 

We still had enough time to walk through the newer part of San Gemini, the downhill side, all the way to the “new” gate (dating from the Renaissance, meaning it’s only 500 or so years old).  Back up to the old gate where we met our bus and the rest of the class, and headed back to La Romita.

 

I sketched my design and put it on a 5 x 7” watercolor block, so I was ready to begin weaving.

 

However, the looms weren’t ready.  Our little tapestry looms were made from copper tubing and elbows – really, pieces of copper pipe bent just like elbow macaroni!  Usually these are put together with caulking to attach the elbows to the pipe pieces, with large nuts and bolts to hold the top half to the bottom half.  (This allows the weaver to adjust the tension as the tapestry progresses.)

 

Well, apparently the local hardware store didn’t have normal caulk, or caulking guns, or something.  The owner recommended a silicone gel or glue, which is what plumbers would use to connect the pipes, creating a waterproof seal.  BUT!  Silicone gel dries slowly.  As in, not dry even with sitting overnight slowly.  So even though J, our instructor’s husband A, and the on-site program director, Edmund, put the looms together on the afternoon of our arrival day and the morning of our first full day, the looms weren’t ready for use.

 

The men all conferred and discussed this issue, along with Valerio, the assistant director – their best fix was to drill holes and screw small bolts in to hold the elbow joints to the straight pieces.  Eight holes and bolts per loom, twelve looms.  Oh well, these things happen.  The bolts were purchased, and the men had our looms ready by the next day.