The History of Silk in Calabria, Italy and the Future of Artisan Craftsmanship
Open Access DepositedThis thesis will outline a history of silk production in Calabria from 800 to 2000 for the first time in English, articulate Calabria’s and Italy’s participation in the initial handcraft revival movements in reaction to the Industrial Revolution in Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and situate the revival of silk production in Calabria in the past thirty years as a new iteration of handicraft revival for today’s global economy. Contemporary Calabrian silk producers are building on their twelve-hundred-year history of both continuous cottage and periodic commercial export silk industries to create a new local silk industry that focuses on environmentalism through regenerative agriculture and sustainable growth within a global industrial economy. Both founded after 1990, organizations such as Dal Baco Alla Seta (From Worm to Silk) and Nido di Seta (Silk Nest) are building a future for silk production in Calabria that respects their rural environs while also bringing jobs and opportunity to an economically underdeveloped region. Silk production may hold the key to viable local development in Calabria that is environmentally and socially beneficial, and could even serve as a model for eco-socialist textile movements in other parts of the world. I will draw on my oral interviews with the founders of both companies, Marianna Bertuca and Miriam Pugliese, and observation of the workshops in Calabria in July of 2023 and collate these with historical, documentary, and material sources to fully understand the significance of silk in Calabria both historically and today.
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