Journal
Innovative weaving by Elda Cecchele, Venice
After her death, the heirs of the Venetian weaver gave her entire studio contents to the Il Museo di Palazzo Mocenigo in Venice. All the photographs here were taken at the exhibition The Elda Cecchele Donation which runs until 2nd March 2025*.
Elda Pavan was born near Padua in 1915. Her father was killed in the First World War and she was largely raised by her grandparents, learning textile skills from her grandmother.
She clearly had entrepreneurial skills as in her teens she chummed up with her close friend Angela, who worked as a commercial spinner, creating household linens and selling them to shops in Padua and Venice.
In 1937, at the age of 22, she married Gino Cecchele, whose wealthy family owned a number of spinning mills in the area and had five children.
After the second world war the Cecchele mills hit financial problems and Elda’s family moved into one of the disused mill buildings in Padua. Here Elda set up a small scale workshop with a hand loom and, in 1947 she registered her business on the artisinal register as Elda Cecchele. By 1966 she had a trademark, Cecchele.
What she was now interested in was making unusual one off, artistic pieces, pushing the boundaries of what weaving meant. That meant either creating her own range or working with existing couture houses to give an edge to their ranges.
From 1947 until 1988 she worked with various Italian fashion brands, providing fabrics for clothes, bags and shoes. Her work - becoming the raw materials for named designers like Ferragamo and Cerrutti - was rarely credited, though behind the scenes she was well known and honoured at large trade events.
What I loved about the samples in the exhibition is how you can see her thinking.
She has a magpie eye for materials.
All kinds of braids, ribbons, leather strips, plastic streamers . . . .
were incorporated into fabrics without worrying about whether it was ‘the done thing’
I particularly love how she incorporates thick ready made trimmings into fabrics.
Threading dyed net and a furnishing braid through a linen woven base.
This one appeared to be plastic streamers with overlocked thread on top, threaded through a wool design.
The fabrics would then be cut up and made into clothes, bags or shoes.
Wedding dresses were particularly popular - probably because they were high ticket, special occasion outfits where laundry would not become a problem.
The fabrics were also made into simple dresses where the various woven ribbons (so like threaded nightdresses in many ways) could be mitred into straps.
And then there were some samples that were simply joyful play
If you read Italian, and are interested, an inventory of the entire collection can be downloaded here though there are not photographs of everything.
Inspiration: Arts and Crafts Bedcover, Kellie Castle, Fife
In 1877, on holiday in Fife, the Lorimer family was spending the long summer holidays in Fife. On a walk they saw the dilapidated Kellie Castle, partially ruined with rooks nesting in the chimneys, and they were won over by its romance. At this time the children - James, Alice, Hannah, Robert, John and Louise were in their late teens and early twenties.
Their father James Lorimer - Professor of Public Law at the University of Edinburgh - approached the Earl of Mar and Kellie with a proposal. If the Earl would make the castle wind and watertight, he would rent the castle on a 100 year improving lease at the rate of £25 a year.
The Lorimers then used the castle as their summer residence, something that was very usual in late C19th Scotland - Professor Lorimer had asthma and he found that the clean air of the Fife countryside alleviated it. What was less usual was how this creative family transformed the interiors. Over the next decade the rooms were swept out and painted, old Scottish furniture was bought, and layers of carvings, textiles and murals were added.
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Robert and Hannah learned how to create decorative plaster ceilings, they installed carved stone and wood detailing wood and Hannah and Louise, alongside their mother, worked on elaborate embroidered textiles.
Everyone in the family was involved - this oil painting by John Henry Lorimer shows Mrs Lorimer and her daughters Hannah and Louise busy embroidering furnishings. A spinning wheel and wool winder are ready to be used, a timer is propped on the window casement, possibly allegorical, possibly practical where there are household things to attend to.
Louise makes the most of the window light, stitching on a frame, Hannah drapes the bedspread she is working on around her.
In 1895, aged 40, Hannah Lorimer married the explorer and diplomat Sir Everard im Thurn. This painting by her brother is a marriage portrait of sorts and shows Hannah in evening dress still working on embroidering a bedspread, her husband perched at the other end of the sofa.
The bedcover that she is working on is similar to this one - which was on show at the Dovecot Studios last year.
It was worked by her younger sister Louise, the last of the siblings to leave Kellie Castle.
I actually wonder if it is the same bedspread in the two paintings - started by Hannah and then passed onto Louise unfinished when Hannah married and moved abroad to take up her position as Governor’s wife.
The bedcover is for a double bed and is worked in wool on linen. This is the original sketch - the monogram was replaced with a pelican.
The sketch was done by Robert Lorimer and it is clear that he knew that, to make it 7 feet six inches wide, a border would have to be added - this is emphasised in the finished work by using a slightly different fabric, though the motifs go over both in a way that is not on the design.
Swirling flower strewed lines form hearts and contain spring flowers and butterflies.
The bullion knots at the centre of this flower show how technically skilled the embroiderer was.
The materials and stitching in the border is subtly different from that on the main panel. I love that the olive green wool has run out and the tip of the leaf is worked in blue.
You can explore more historically inspired embroidery in the Stitched course.
Inspiration: Arts and Crafts embroidery, Kellie Castle Daffodils
This beautiful, pared back embroidery was made for Kellie Castle in Fife, summer home of the Lorimer family, and now in the care of the National Trust of Scotland. It is one of the pieces that is currently on exhibition in Stitched at The Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh.
I chose to highlight it as it show how elegant a pared back colour scheme can be - this was originally pale yellow, now cream, on natural linen. The shading and form is all done via the angle of the stitching. Look at the top flower and you can see the outlining and filling in - there are no complicated stitches.
This cloth shows off the variety of daffodils that bloomed at Kellie - their flowering coincided with the family returning there each Spring. It is a kind of personalised decoration that was central to the architect Robert Lorimer’s idea of home. The cloth would have been part of an interior that also has carved stone and wood, bespoke furniture, carefully chosen pottery and glass.
The writing underneath the flowers reads “Daffodils that come before the swallow dares take the winds of March with beauty”
The design is likely to have been drawn out by Robert Lorimer and, though the Lorimer women were very productive embroiderers, this piece was stitched by Jeannie Black (later Skinner), a young local Fife embroiderer who was employed by Robert Lorimer on many projects.
In the course Stitched we explore hand embroidery, how it was used to decorate the home and what inspiration we can take from old examples.
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