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 Textile design  Tracollonda, 2015

Warp: cotton
Weft: cotton or wool, doubled or trebled
1/3 twill alternating with plain weave, upper borders in plain weave

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Tensioning the yellow warp (photo: Nicola Amato)
Checking the chage in structure (photo: Nicola Amato)
Blue Tracollonda
Tracollonde in different materials and colours on the same yellow cotton warp
Tracollonde in different materials and colours on the same yellow cotton warp

This cheerful shoulder bag for summer or winter evenings derives from similar bags designed by me and my former partners Paola Bonfante and Lalla Ranza. Several years on I took up this design again at the Fondazione Le Costantine to create woven artefacts destined to be sold both in museum bookshops and in the shop of the Fondazione weaving laboratory. They were woven and finished by the weavers of the Fondazione. The bags were woven from the same warp, using different weft yarns to create unique pieces. The convex look of the 1/3 twill sets off the textures and colours of the thick wefts. This structure plays on the contrast between the flat, smooth bands of plain weave and the rounded, textured twill bands. It weaves quickly and the resulting object is pleasant to the eye and well-designed; moreover it can be priced at a reasonable level and is thus likely to be popular. When designing for a market, it is important to take production time into consideration. Thus a single warp can yield very different-looking items by simply varying the materials and colours in the weft.