WHEN IN ITALY...

Everybody buys a shawl in Bellagio.  Luckily, some are still made in Italy.

Two summer's ago, I stopped in Prato, anticipating that I would still be able to hear the hum of the textile weaving machines and perhaps visit the textile museum.  I had romantic visions of The Merchant of Prato still jaunting down the streets with his pockets stuffed full of sales orders.  My cab ride to the hotel near the train station should have been a tip-off.  The driver nearly wept as he told me how the Prato Italian industry was no more and its wonderful craftspeople were out of work.

Later on arrival day, going out to find a restaurant for dinner in the neighborhood of the hotel, I realized that I didn't want to be there at all and quickly decided to move on the following afternoon.  In the morning, I would visit Lorenzo de Medici's villa a couple of towns away and then leave Prato for the quiet of Fiesole.

By last summer, there were stories in  the New York Times and on National Public Radio about "fast fashion" that could be legally labeled "made in Italy" because it was.  Fabric was shipped into Prato from Asia and the workers were shipped into Prato as well.  The resultant product neither represented Italian quality or soul.  This past mid-March, there were reports that Italian critics who understood the textile industry finally spoke out about  the government's decision to support the country's mechanical industry at the sacrifice of textiles.

Other than the touristy shawl merchants of Bellagio and the high-end Etros and friends, there are few textile finds for the shopper who doesn't want the global designer labels that can easily be found in U.S. boutiques.  Later in the trip I would find some smashing scarves in a small Lucca boutique that all had French labels, one being hand-sewn and embroidered in India.  In Bologna, I would find an Italian-woven silk with the label of a UK designer.

Dear Prato, I wish I could make things better for you. Even Detroit is sort of developing its fashion industry. JP

A PAISLEY SONG FOR ORPHEUS

Orpheus Fountain at Cranbrook

Gloria Sachs, well known in the fashion world for the luxurious silk day separates that bore her label (1970 to 1994) and were worn by a large, loyal contingent of American women who shopped at the finest specialty stores, died March 12.  Her knowledge and passion for textile design were an inspiration, in particular the perfectly engineered paisley patterns she created and printed at the Ratti facilities in Como, Italy. She may well have been the first fashion designer to incorporate the acanthus leaf pattern with the paisley.

She studied textile design at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Mich., and described her student days, sitting around the school's Orpheus fountain with famous Cranbrook artists, architects and fabric and furniture designers who would soon change the course of mid-century American design.  "I thought all of life would be like that," she confessed one day. She went on to design fabric for Hans Knoll and Herman Miller and some of those textiles are in the Museum of Modern Art.  This was to be just one of her many honors throughout a long and giving career.

Certainly the work Sachs did at Antonio Ratti's studio with windows facing the lake, her own paintings and sculptures that were widely exhibited, her association with the Chinese artist Xu Bing and her proposed Beijing trip as a visiting scholar scheduled for fall, represented the beauty and delight that would please Orpheus.

Personally I like to visualize the piercing intelligence and talent and endless energy of an ageless Gloria Sachs sitting in the warm spring sun at the Cranbrook Fountain, the masterwork of sculptor Carl Milles, saying "Yes, after all,  life is like that."  JP

Gloria Sachs' paisley fashion sketch probably from the 1980s

IS THAT A BOTEH ON YOUR TURBAN?

QAJAR PERIOD (1779-1925) 19TH CENTURY SILVER ORNAMENT

The New Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands at The Metropolitan Museum of Art are not overrun with examples of the boteh or paisley motif, but what is found is outstanding. As with the Mughal flask of last post, I was onto a needle-in-a-palace search, this time for an 19th-century silver turban ornament from Iran's Qajar period, a richly gilded and wire-filigree patterned oval with applied enamels,  a pearl center and a boteh on top.

The area's small Edward C. Moore Collection room had been first overlooked in the walk round and round.  There are several rooms for private collections, each with its own door.  And the Moore Collection houses one of them.  Mr. Moore, a 19th-century New Yorker, had been the owner of the ornament.

It seems that all kinds of important men have worn some style of head wrap over the ages to set themselves apart from commoners.  A power look in Renaissance Florence appears to have included the loosely-tied head coverings certain well-connected men threw on for profile portraits that are now on display in another of the Met's second-floor exhibits.  The princes of the church had their full vocabulary of miters with trailing streamers and beanies. And the Arab royals had their perfect turbans, many times with head ornaments that held  big, fluffy feathers that tended to curl into the boteh shape at the top of royal heads.

It could be conjectured that because of 15th-century Florence's interest in eastern textiles, scholarship and culture,  the Renaissance capital had been loving the head-wrap look.  But it was the Arab regal who would have won the Global Style Award for his perfectly wrapped turban topped with a beautiful ornament and maybe an attention-getting feather bobbing ever so slightly as he spoke. JP

MUGHAL MAGIC AT THE NEW MET GALLERIES

In the mid 17th century, this flask was made for a Mughal and 
decorated with a motif including emerald boteh.

A Dec. 27 Wall Street Journal story headlined "The Year's Best Arts Adventure" told me a few things I hadn't considered. There are 1,200 objects on view at the New Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia and Later South Asia that opened in November at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And that these galleries have a collection of 12,000 objects to show us over time, enough to be a museum all its own.

Approaching the museum recently, I was entranced by a huge poster photo on one of its advertising kiosks. There was this giant Mughal flask covered with rich dots of rubies and enamels, traceries of gold and yes, the most perfect emeralds carved into boteh or teardrop motifs. Once inside the exhibit, it became my focused mission to locate that flask which turned out to be maybe seven inches tall at most.

One could marvel the whole afternoon at the gentle rock crystal carved into a mango shape and detailed with the probably-impossible-to-duplicate design fit for a Mughal emperor. I wondered what the owner carried in his flask-- an essence for fragrance or for his health? A clear liquid essence might turn the magical design into a variety of patterns at each new perspective, in each kind of light. I would think that candlelight would be best. The mango shape would be soft in the hand and reminiscent of the beloved boteh, sometimes referred to as a mango motif. The museum signage places the Mughal period from 1526 to 1858 and the flask at mid 17th century.

Whoever that Mughal owner was, I am sure he was an even finer person whenever he looked at his exquisite flask, and if he was anything like Akbar The Great, (1542 to 1605), perhaps humbled by its great artistry. JP

WHERE IS THE POINT?

A lozenge is not a paisley.  The background resembles
the design of golden Buccellati jewelry.

If readers would return to the initial entry in the Paisley Diaries blog, they would find me, a Detroit child, disappointed at not receiving an answer from grown-ups as to the meaning of paisley.

Now I am a teenager, who like many budding fashionistas, spends free time roaming though stores. My store of choice is what Life magazine once called one of the largest stores in the United States and if measuring sales volume, the downtown store was a  larger producer than Macy's 34th Street if one didn't count the sales of liquor that Macy's offered.

J. L. Hudson existed in two separate side-by-side buildings that extended from 1206 Woodward Avenue to Farmer Street, buildings with 12 huge upstairs selling floors plus a mezzanine and two basement floors and was so beautifully built, they had trouble demolishing it when downtown Detroit almost closed down. (Detroit is on the move right now to reverse that trend). The store was my museum, my school, my refuge. And after visiting the basement and fashion floors, I always ended up in the fabric department, spending hours walking among the rows and rows of fascinating bolts. I knew I would never be handy enough to sew but if the price were right, I could bring fabric and ideas home to my mother.

It is the late 50s and paisley is fashion, so are scarves called "smoke rings". I bought a small piece of a beautiful print that I thought might be a paisley, an ornamental motif against a background of overlapping gold circles against green. Yes, my mother turned it into a smoke ring in about five minutes.

It was folded away for so long and seemed to allude finding but as I began working on this blog, it presented itself. I was shocked to find that it was not a paisley at all! Where was the teardrop shape? the little tip at the top? Where was the point? It has been suggested that it might be called a lozenge with multifoil background decoration and that the design tend to resemble Buccellati jewelry.

If there were pieces of Buccellati jewelry in Hudson's Fine Jewelry department, I never found them but the concept is correct. There is an over-the-top richness of mid-eastern design to my smoke ring. Buccellati, the Milanese family company grew up from its silversmith days of 1750 to the rich-lady sophistication of 1919 when Mario Buccellati opened his first jewelry stores. The characteristic look was intricate, over-the-top gold workings, the king's ransom kind. And so like the Italian eye to love that richness.

So, although I may never own a Buccellati bracelet, I do have yet another treasure from Hudson's and my mother. No quite a paisley, but this is not the end of the story. JP

GLOBAL EMPEROR OF TRADITIONAL DESIGN

Ralph Lauren bedding design in traditional paisley-and-stripe pattern.
From the collection of Deanna Littell.

The 80's was an exciting time in the New York design world.  I had been doing stories on home furnishings, particularly the very profitable bedding area and was invited to attend a press opening of the new Ralph Lauren licensing program featuring the J.P. Stevens collection.

I remember the exhibit began with a small, token alcove that displayed  Ralph Lauren's denims and western look fashions for men and women.  The spotlight space  was reserved for a gigantic display of Ralph Lauren bedding towels and tablecloths by J.P.Stevens, finished off with RL china and stemware.  I can't remember if there was wall- and floor-covering at this time, but I do remember smiling at what I called "the 25 shades of white" displayed  in the Ralph Lauren paint collection. We all left with a paint color chart.  With the ignorance of a civilian, I didn't understand that there would be an on-going market for home stylists who indeed could tell the difference between Navajo and Nantucket white.

But most importantly,  I didn't have the foresight to appreciate that this underpinning of home licenses would turn Ralph Lauren into The Emperor. Well, someone else had that foresight!  Michael Gross in his book, Genuine Authentic:  The Real Life of Ralph Lauren credits Marvin Traub, then president of Bloomingdale's and a man who started his career in home furnishings, for advising the designer to develop the "unprecedented yet classic concept".  

Lauren was already hooked on the rich-uncle look of the well-worn Persian carpet against the hardwood floor, the fat paisley damask pillows on the sofa.  Why not paisley bedding, table linens, even for heaven's sakes, bath towel sets?

That began three decades of beautiful, affordable paisley designs for the home.  We are showing the paisley and stripe motif, similar to one that would be used on classic Kerman shawls from Persia. Gross also points out that the home collection didn't turn a profit until another six years.  At the book's writing in 2003, Gross estimates that Lauren's Home line had been doing "a couple hundred million dollars in annual volume". JP

WHEN IRISH EYES SEE PAISLEY

A page from the 7th century Book of Durrow.
Note the paisley-like motifs that help support the circles.

Detail of embroidered Mass vestment from the Cathedral
at Loughea, built 1897-1903.

Since prehistoric times, it seems that the people of Ireland have been drawn to the visual power of circles and concentric shapes. Stone circles appear to have been dated there to the Bronze Age. Early Christian manuscripts are concentric super stars with illumination ranging from the long, skinny snake-like forms of St. Patrick's least-favorite animals to closely-knotted forms that work so well with the monk's calligraphy.  The Book of Kells of the 9th century is one best-known examples of this.

Although not in the center spotlight, paisley-like forms were generated as an occasional counterbalance to tightly-locked circular forms, see the page from the 7th century Book of Durrow.

The motif, called "boteh" in Persia and "buti" in India, owes its full formation to the leadership of Mughal Emperor Akbar (1542-1605) in the Kashmir valley of perfect goats, textile-dying conditions and master shawl weavers.

Throughout 19th century Europe, the vestments of Roman Catholic priests worn for Mass  often featured the motif, although there were some earlier evidences as well.  Here is an example from the Cathedral at Loughrea county, Galway, built 1897-1903.   Center is a trefoil paisley-like motif that most likely references the Trinity.  At the secondary circles, naturalistic ears of rye.  The outermost circles show the characteristic Celtic knotted motifs. JP