Printed Matter: L’arte di disporre ornamenti sulle stoffe by Enrico Casartelli

I swear I almost got nightmares from seeing pictures of artist Grayson Perry dressed like his Claire alter ego sitting in a Liberty window shop.

I have always found Perry extremely disturbing and I honestly wish he would go around dressed like a grown up woman rather than like a little child.

Despite Perry was promoting a fashion-meets-art project – Liberty’s printed textile exhibition and new fabrics created in collaboration with British designers – seeing him in a voluminous floral printed frock freaked me out so much that I decided to take refuge in a proper book about prints, an Italian volume I absolutely love, L’arte di disporre ornamenti sulle stoffe by Enrico Casartelli.

The book was published in 1911 by Hoepli and was originally aimed at textile students, printers, wallpaper and rug designers and decorators.

Casartelli was a professor at the Regia Scuola del Setificio di Como, the Royal Silk School of Como, so the volume was mainly considered as a handy manual for all those students who wanted to become one day textile printers or develop designs for wallpapers and such likes.

The volume featured almost 200 drawings and tables in colour and analysed how to plan motifs for textile prints, studying their positions, dimensions, geometrical divisions and proportions.

Casartelli also made a classification of the various drawings applied to different materials and textiles, highlighted the main rules to distribute the motifs on fabric or paper and showed the different effects a textile printer can achieve by connecting motifs together from a vertical or horizontal perspective.

“To make sure that ornamental motifs and designs fulfil the requirements of the modern industry, it is necessary to follow specific rules and criteria that can help highlighting the beauty of a design and improve its final visual effect,” Casartelli wrote in the introduction.

“Those students who want to become textile printers shouldn’t just reproduce ornamental subjects – copying them from nature or taking inspirations from other fields – they should make sure they know how to print them following the proper criteria, knowing that the final effect will be more elegant if specific rules will be respected.”

Casartelli also claimed in the introduction that there wasn’t much variations when it came to the motifs of printed textiles between the 1400s and the 1700s.

Things changed around the 1800s, but no publication that analysed the rules behind printing over textiles was available yet.

Casartelli includes in the main part of the volume tables that show how to distribute specific motifs on grids divided in 4, 16, 25, 36, 49 and 64 little squares, then he passes onto analysing the position of symmetrical and asymmetrical motifs, focuses on printing tone-on-tone motifs and also classifies the different motifs applied to fabrics, highlighting which are the most common mistakes committed by textiles printers.

I like many illustrations featured in this volume, but I particularly love the brightly coloured ones, like those showing shocking pink motifs inspired by nature that the author used to explain some basic printing rules.

I made a very brief video (see end of this post) while leafing through the book, quality is not great, but it will maybe provide you with a preview of what the book is about and hopefully you will find some of the motifs, colour matches and tables rather inspiring.

The book is out of print at the moment, but you may find rare copies on the Internet, from specialised antiquarian shops and in many Italian libraries.

If you happen to be in Como and would like to know more about silk, textiles and printing techniques, visit the Museo Didattico della Seta (Educational Silk Museum of Como).

It will offer you interesting insights into the world of silk and printed textiles from the Como area and it’s shop also has a wide range of titles, from books on lace making to reprints of historical volumes such as Emilio Greco’s Fabbricazione delle stoffe operate, originally published in 1911
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The Como area is famous for silk-making and textile printing.

Studying these arts was already popular in the mid-1800s.

Among the most famous silk experts/textile printers there were also Pietro Pinchetti, Ferruccio Severini, Attilio Lenticchia, Piero Ponci, Giovanni Maria Berliat, Francesco Solety Carrière.

A school – the Scuola Comunale di Setificio della Città di Como – specialised in silk making and printing was established in the 1800s.

The school changed its name into Regia Scuola di Setificio in 1904, and in 1921 it became the Regio Istituto Nazionale di Setificio.

At the time this was considered as the only school where it was possible to study topics connected with the silk industry.

The school changed its name again in 1933 and in 1942 and it's known nowadays as the Istituto Tecnico Industriale Statale 'Paolo Carcano'.

The school is mainly aimed at young teenagers, but it also offers evening classes for professionals who want to develop or refine their skills.

If you are a textile printer and are looking for an internship around the Como area try instead contacting renowned company Punto Seta. Here you can find a list of young designers who have collaborated/ are collaborating with the company.