Meet Marta Cucchia, One of the Last Artisans Keeping Umbria's Weaving Tradition Alive
Issue #26
Italy is famous for traditional crafts, like leather-making, glassblowing, ceramics, and weaving. Yet it’s becoming harder and harder for artisans to make a living. That’s why it’s so important to support Italy’s hard-working artisans. Fortunately, some of the best studios and workshops are open to the public for visits and take commissions from afar. One such place is the Museo Atelier Giuditta Brozzetti in Perugia, which I visited a few months ago.
Founded by Giuditta Brozzetti in the 1920s, the atelier is now run by fourth-generation owner Marta Cucchia. Located in a deconsecrated church just a few minutes from the main sights in Perugia’s centro storico, the atelier is a magical place full of antique looms that Marta and her partners still use to produce gorgeous textiles featuring medieval Umbrian motifs as well as more modern designs. In fact, Marta collaborated with Fendi to create a special edition of their iconic baguette. If you’re planning a trip to Umbria, I highly recommend a visit to the atelier. I recently caught up with Marta and am thrilled to share her story as part of a series of interviews with creatives and entrepreneurs in Italy.
Let’s start with the beginning, with the history of the atelier. It was your great-grandmother who created it, right?
Exactly, it was Giuditta Brozzetti who founded it in 1921 and registered it in the chamber of artisans.
And she was a teacher, right?
Actually, during the First World War, she was the superintendent of the schools of Perugia. She was a primary school teacher. Then, when the men went to the front, which happened all over Europe, the women found themselves filling the men’s roles. So my great-grandmother was promoted from a school teacher to the superintendent of the schools of Perugia. Many women all over Europe during that time found themselves acting as mayors and all kinds of things because the men went off to war.
In this period, during the First World War, as part of her duties, she went around the school districts around Perugia. During that time, kids weren’t sent to school very systematically because they were field hands in the countryside. So she went to visit these school districts. And it was there that she discovered, still alive in the Umbrian countryside, these very ancient textile traditions founded during the Middle Ages.
At that time, did she already know much about this tradition?
Probably, because you have to consider that Umbria was taken by a revival of this artistic tradition. Around the end of the 1800s and the beginning of the 1900s, many of these textile laboratories flourished, so she surely had some knowledge of this ancient tradition.
Her interest, though, was to recover these rustic, simple traditions of the countryside because there was a laboratory already open that made very refined textiles, and another laboratory that made the fiamma di Perugia. She, on the other hand, before opening the laboratory, began buying from these women who made these textiles that she saw in paintings and photos and recognized that they were the same textiles that were depicted in medieval paintings. It was there that she began, by recovering this art.
In the beginning, how many women did she have working in the atelier with her?
You have to consider that the atelier wasn’t where you saw it. This is the most recent location, inside the church, which dates back to 1996. It was a diffused laboratory because my great-grandmother had a few looms in the attic of her apartment. She had other looms in the area of Santa Elisabetta. Many artisans continued to work in their homes in the countryside because it was there that she discovered these techniques. Many women had looms in their homes. So the atelier was completely diffused, spread here and there. I remember, from what my mother told me, that the maximum number of artisans was 35.
Not bad!
No, no! We exported, we had big clients. Between the First and Second World Wars, we had huge clients in the United States who ordered 10,000 pieces at a time. We’re talking about a big production. Then unfortunately with the dictatorship of Mussolini, we lost many clients because Mussolini wanted to create an autonomous economy that would support itself, so we lost all our foreign clients.
What a jerk!
At the time, people thought it was the right thing to do—decisively misguided thoughts—but they thought it would work.
It’s not the first time there were some problems... I remember we were talking about Umbria and the war with the pope.
That was different. The Umbrian textile production made Perugia extremely famous in the Middle Ages. We were a sort of textile center known all throughout Europe, to the point that our fabrics were commercialized and exported in all of Europe by our merchants. We find them depicted in all the most important works by medieval and Renaissance artists like Giotto, Simone Martini, Ghirlandaio, the Last Supper of Leonardo Da Vinci... and even in the Cathedral of Canterbury in the 1300s, depicted in the dome of Rottenburg, in all the iconography of the period.
This enormous production wasn’t just Umbrian tablecloths, but also veils, like the extremely subtle veils that you often see depicted on the heads of Madonnas and other women in the Renaissance. We did the fiamma di Perugia, which was very colorful. There were various kinds of textiles. Everything was cut off by the darling pope because we rebelled against his taxation on salt—we rebelled but in reality it was he who brought in the army to make us change our minds and we surrendered. We were punished unfairly, because in reality there was no war—we surrendered immediately.
The pope, however, wanted to be particularly severe with this city because at least this way it would serve as a warning to other cities that might have the idea to rebel against the pope. So for this reason, Perugia was disproportionately punished. And it was then that the pope prohibited the production of textiles for commercial ends, so this enormous production that brought riches to the city was cut off.
In which century?
1540.
So from that point on, everything changed.
Yes, but apart from the textiles, everything changed on an economic and societal level because Umbria was thrust into a state of terrible poverty. Because obviously, the economy was cut off. So until the unification of Italy, we remained completely frozen economically in 1540. This is one of the reasons why in Umbria—you’ve seen it, with all the little medieval villages with their fortified walls still intact—there hasn’t been a development, the way in Rome there’s the baroque. Here, that never happened because we were poor.
In a way, though, it was lucky, no?
Now, yes, but for three and a half centuries there was hunger here. These businesses, like the one created by my great-grandmother at the beginning of the 1900s, had a double purpose. One was to revitalize this textile tradition, but the more important purpose was to give work and economic remuneration to these extremely poor women. In Umbria in the early 1900s, people still died of hunger. There were two or three families that had everything and the poor farmers in the countryside were dying of hunger. That’s why these businesses were born, to give economic independence and a salary to the women in these poor families.
All of the ateliers—not only that of my great-grandmother—were born with this intention. One of the first was in Città di Castello. This woman married a baron from the north of Umbria, and going around Umbria, she was shocked by the poverty of the women and their families. And she started this textile workshop in 1907 with a nursery inside, so that these women had the possibility of earning a salary but also of bringing their children with them, because otherwise they didn’t know what to do with them. So we’re talking about a big emancipation.
Does that one still exist?
Yes, the Tela Umbra still exists, but it’s the property of the region, not private.
So for how long did Atelier Brozzetti remain diffused?
I don’t know precisely, but at a certain point it was moved to the area of Ponte Felcino, but then in 1954 if I’m not mistaken, my grandmother—the daughter of Giuditta—moved it up to the Villa Baldelli Bombelli in Perugia, so it was all united in one place. This was a family home because my grandmother married Count Baldelli Bombelli and she brought the laboratory to the stables and the farmhouse of this villa and the showroom was in the ex-ballroom of the villa.
And then you moved the atelier to the cathedral?
Yes, but actually it was a project of my mother and father. My father is the owner of the church. My mother is the third generation of the workshop. They had this project that they weren’t able to accomplish because it seemed that the workshop didn’t have earnings, so my mother stopped because it didn’t make sense. Then I came in and fulfilled their dream. And the miracle is that we’re still here.
You did the massive job of transporting all those looms there. How many looms do you have now?
At this moment, I have seven Jacquard looms from the 1800s and three pedal looms, including one from the 1700s.
And you were telling me that you had to learn how to repair them, no?
Yes, I’m still learning because there’s no manual for repairing them. The fact that I had to dismantle them helped me immensely. I had to dismantle all the pieces and then put them back together, so I started to understand which pieces go together. And then over the years, I learned bit by bit, but even today things happen that have never happened before, so I have to puzzle out what to do and find a solution.
Because there’s no one you can call...
No, there aren’t anymore.
Have you done any studies or gone to visit other ateliers, like the Antico Setificio in Florence?
I went, but only recently. Everything I learned I learned here, as an autodidact. Even learning to fix the looms, I did it all by myself, encountering a problem and learning to fix it. Lately, I’ve gone to see Bevilacqua in Venice, which is a marvelous place, and I visited the Setificio Fiorentino, but in 2020 during Covid. It was my mother who went around to all the textile workshops. I’m the more practical one, the artisan. My mother was more theoretical.
How did you know that this was your calling?
I didn’t know. I studied interior design in Milan. I didn’t even want to live in Perugia. I left and went to Milan saying, “Ciao! I’m out of here.” I did the IED, the Institute of Design for interior design. And while I was there, my mother decided to close because it seemed that no one wanted to pursue this business. My sisters tried, but they didn’t really like it. This is a job that you have to do with extreme dedication and passion.
So my mother told me, “Marta, I decided to close,” and I decided that year—the summer between the third and fourth year—to go back and learn how to weave because I knew that if we closed, we would have lost the weavers, the only ones capable of weaving. Because my mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother were entrepreneurs who gave work to the women in the countryside. I’m actually the first weaver in the family. I fell in love with weaving. I finished my studies in Milan, I returned to Perugia, and I reopened.
But now the difficulty is finding people who can and want to do this work.
Yes, this is extremely tiring because it requires a very high level of specialization that you can only do here because there are no schools that can prepare you. And it requires a huge amount of love. At this moment, I have two young women who became my partners because we became a cooperative in ‘94. And now I have these two partners who are French and who fell in love with the workshop and I’m teaching them, so at least I have someone to pass this knowledge on to.
Luckily.
Yes, I’m very lucky. I was convinced that when I finished, everything would end.
How long does it take to learn how to weave the textiles?
Let’s say a few months. Lise is very determined, so in just a few months, she began to produce. Sophie has a predisposition, which she didn't know she had. Put in front of a loom, she went for it. Incredible. It happened a bit to me, but I justified it with the fact that I grew up in the workshop. Sophie never had anything to do with looms, but she has a predisposition. But the two of them are good at it—very, very good at it.
How long does it take to create a textile, like for example a runner or a tablecloth?
It depends on what kind of work we have to do. Consider that to create a runner in the medieval Perugian style, it takes about a week. To create a simpler runner, it might take two or three days. It depends on how complex the piece is. I consider—even if it’s not exactly correct—a rate of about 25 cm per day. In reality, we can do more, but I have to consider all the time we spend preparing the threads and the loom, so the average is more or less 25 or 30 cm per day.
Incredible.
Yes, in fact, there’s the Antico Setificio Fiorentino and Bevilacqua in Venice, but we’re the last to make this type of production with these looms.
Not even that other workshop that you mentioned in Umbria does it?
No, they only make pure linen. They don’t make these textiles. You remember we make griffons, lions, etc. At Telaio Umbro in Città di Castello, they only make simple linen textiles without decorations.
What are the most traditional motifs in Umbria?
The traditional motifs are tied to our Perugian tablecloths, which were these sacred decorations that decorated all the churches and not only, because then they became symbols of wealth for the noble and powerful families. So it’s a huge iconography. Griffons are very prominent, but also unicorns are one of the most prominent motifs in our medieval textiles. Lions. They’re full of decorative motifs. Florals. Hawks. There’s everything.
Aside from these medieval motifs, you also make modern designs, no?
Yes, when I have time. One of the most recent was born in 2017, in collaboration with the Fondazione Cologni for artisans. It’s a foundation in Milan that’s dedicated to the protection and promotion of Italian artistic and artisan production and design. And they’re the ones who organize, along with the Fondazione Cigna, the Michelangelo Foundation, or Homo Faber. Have you heard about Homo Faber?
I think so, but I'm not sure.
It’s the one that happens in Venice every two years. It’s one of the most important events for design and artisanship. Thanks to the Fondazione Cologni, I was able to create a modern design, together with a Milanese artisan, that’s called mandorlato, which was created in 2017 for the initiative Doppia Firma, which pairs architects, designers, and artisans and they present their creations at the Fuori Salone exhibition in Milan.
You also collaborated with Fendi, no?
Yes, that was the gift of Covid. During the lockdown, I was contacted by Fendi, and it was a huge honor to be asked to interpret their iconic model, the baguette, which they asked one artisan from each region to interpret. So for each edition, there are 20 different baguettes made by one artisan from each region. And I represented Umbria for the first edition of this project.
And I saw that there were also dresses made by your mother or your grandmother.
That was my grandmother. The atelier was founded by my great-grandmother, who began a work of researching iconography that was never interrupted. Everything that she began doing was continued by my grandmother, my mother, and me. She’s the one who started. My grandmother, who was, as I told you before, married to a count, was a very chic woman. She loved fashion. She had the idea to create a line of dresses with these textiles, which was very lucky because we exhibited these fashions at fashion week in Milan in the ‘50s and ‘60s. We participated in fashion shows in Milan with these collections until the ‘70s. But back then there were still 20 workers. Now we couldn’t do it anymore. We don’t have the capacity to create a collection of clothes—it’s unthinkable.
It takes too much time, too much labor…
Exactly. It’s impossible. We make accessories, scarves, stoles, bags, aside from home decor, but we can’t even think about making a jacket or something.
Not even on request?
I made a wedding dress because that’s just one thing, so it was okay. But we can’t make a collection because just to make a collection of jackets, you have to make one of each size. You know how many meters of textiles that would be?
I remember you saying that you prefer to work with private clients, on made-to-measure projects...
Yes, but usually it’s for the house because I’m an interior designer. I make scarves, but not jackets. I made a wedding dress, collaborating with a tailor years ago, but it’s not my sector. I’m not a fashion designer, I’m an interior designer, so I couldn’t make a collection of clothes. It’s not my speciality. And in fashion, I've been contacted by various companies, but it ends up being too expensive for the parameters that there are in high fashion.
Yes, you told me that the cost in general is very high, even to create a tablecloth or something.
Yes, the cost is high because it takes many days. In fact, I get angry when people tell me “You’re expensive.” Expensive is for an object that’s not worth anything. It’s a brand and they make you pay a lot. I’m costly because it takes a lot to make it, which is very different.
And that's why you don’t sell to stores, right?
Very few. Only a few stores that have a few of my objects for an exclusive, niche line. But they’re very few because they have to be in love with it and have my objects to have unique objects, not to make money. You don’t make money with these kinds of objects.
Which stores have your products?
At this moment, there’s a store in Gubbio, one in Paris that designs books, one in Germany, and then a guy that doesn't run a store but a network of sales in New York.
So apart from Gubbio, nobody else in Italy?
No, maybe someone has some old piece from my production, because the workshop has been open for 100 years. It has happened to me to go to Assisi and find my textiles in some shop, or textiles from my mother, etc. I also furnished some shops in Assisi, so maybe some shops have something left, but of the ones I furnish regularly, there’s only Gubbio. For example, the one that designs books went to the Amalfi Coast this summer, but these are small things.
You told me that you have a lot of American clients, no?
The biggest piece of my clientele is American, Canadian, Australian, New Zealanders, and a small part in northern Europe.
In your opinion, why is that?
Because many have a lot more respect for artisanship, maybe because it doesn’t exist where they live, or it’s disappeared. So they value it more. Maybe Italians are too tired of it. We grew up surrounded by artisanship, so in my opinion we don’t give it the proper value. But that’s my opinion. And then, Italy is famous in the world, so to come to Italy and visit a workshop, have the opportunity to buy a piece that you know is one-of-a-kind, that’s the souvenir par excellence that you can bring home rather than the magnet or the statuette of the Colosseum.
To buy a true, authentic, artisanal object is the best way to support our culture, which is important, because this know-how that these workshops have only survives if they succeed in selling their products. And I have to say, Americans are very conscious of this. Many of them say, “I’m going to buy this object because it’s beautiful but above all because I want to support your project of keeping this workshop alive.” Italians never say that. They buy an object to decorate their house. Instead, Americans have this double purpose. They’re also the ones that are used to financing projects. In Italy, we have this a bit less—a lot less.
On that note, can you remind me about the story of Brett Tollman and the Treadright Foundation?
Yes, of course. In 2015, I was in a desperate situation because the roof was leaking and water was coming in when it rained. I didn’t have work because after 2008, there was a monstrous crisis and I lost a lot of business because before I had many shops in Umbria, in Assisi, in Spoleto—they all closed. So I was in a really dramatic situation. I wasn’t able to see any hope. And I got an email at the end of 2014 from the TreadRight Foundation, but I was convinced it was spam so I didn’t respond. You know, you receive an email that says, “We’re a foundation and we want to support you,” would you believe it?
Luckily, they insisted. They sent one of their employees, because they have many Italian employees that work in their London offices. This Nicolò is from Florence and he came to visit me and talk to me about these people. I didn’t even connect it with the email that I had deleted months before. And he said, “I came to do an inspection, this place is marvelous, I’ll come back next week with this Canadian woman who works for the foundation.” And the next week, she got on a plane five months pregnant and came here because they had to do this project within the week. They didn’t want to tell me how they found me, so I don’t know.
They came and said, “We’ll give you a grant,” and I didn’t even understand what the word grant meant because my English is very bad. So I couldn’t believe it, but that’s how it all started. But not just the grant, which obviously helped me repair the church and maintain the looms, put to work the old looms that I didn’t use anymore, but the intention of the TreadRight Foundation isn’t just to support you—because if you support me, you don’t give life back to the business. But as partners of the Travel Corporation, they send me groups because that’s how I survive, not with the grant. The grant is of course a huge help, but the survival of the atelier is thanks to the sales with these groups.
Believe me, I still ask myself how this miracle is possible. I’m on their website as one of their projects that they’re proud of. They even invited me in 2019 to their annual convention with the Travel Corporation and there were banners with my face on them. I was overwhelmed. They’re really my guardian angels. And imagine that during Covid, they gave me the same grant even though they couldn’t send groups. And I send the invoices, justifiably, I do projects. They don’t just give me money for no reason, it’s for a project. That year, they said, “We don’t want to see anything. We just want you to stay open. We’ll give you money, you just make sure to stay open.”
If I didn't have this support and the support of the Travel Corporation, I don’t think I would be open today. Actually, I’m almost sure of it. Imagine that they paid for the first year of apprenticeship of my two partners. They're exceptional.
They do incredible things.
I also said it when I had the honor of meeting Brett Tollman. I wasn’t able to properly express my gratitude. And he was the one fawning over me. When I tried to express how grateful I was, he said to me, “We’re the ones who have to thank you for doing this work.”
It’s been very hard. I told you about the good side of it, but in reality it’s been very hard. Very hard for my mother. She fought like a lion, investing all of her money to support the atelier, which was losing money. I didn’t put my money into it, but I put my life into it. I dedicated my entire life to this workshop with passion and love, but it’s not a proper job. I don’t make a salary to live on. I do it because I have a passion for it.
And luckily you found these young women who will keep it going.
Yes, this is the last miracle that happened to me.
Because you don’t have kids, do you?
No, this is my creation. It would have been impossible to have a family. I didn’t want one anyway—but I dedicated myself to it completely. Every day, I wake up with the first thought in my head about the workshop and I go to sleep thinking about the things I have to do in the workshop. I’m obsessed.
You’re an inspiration, Marta.
No, I’m just crazy. Many people have a passion, but they don’t have the luck to be able to dedicate themselves to it. For me, I think the most important word is perseverance because even when everything was going wrong, and I didn't have money to pay the bills, to pay my workers, to repair the roof, I never gave up. Never.
That counts. That's fundamental.
Maybe because I'm not very clever, but it all turned around. The first 20 years were really tough. Now, since I’ve been connected to the TreadRight Foundation... Even in terms of recognition. Because you do something and you think, “what a fool, only I want to do it.” You don’t find political or institutional support, apart from some people who tell you, “You’re doing the right thing,” but there’s not really anything on a national level to support and promote artisanship. So I was really alone in this battle. Yes, I was supported by my family, but I didn’t see the light. So to have people on the outside who say, “You’re doing something incredible, we want to help you,” believe me, it was one of the things that made me happiest.
It’s a shame that Italy doesn’t recognize and support its artisans.
It’s sad because Italy is made up of little artisan workshops. It’s our history and we’re losing everything because every time an artisan workshop closes, it’s not just a small business closing, but the knowledge and background that’s been passed down for generations is lost forever and it’ll be impossible to get it back. Believe me, I say it with my heart torn apart. Every time a workshop closes, it’s like a knife to my heart.
You’re not the first person to tell me that Italy is losing its artisans and that it’s us, Americans, who appreciate them.
Yes, it’s moving. People who come in here hug me, kiss me, say to me, “What an incredible thing. I beg of you, don’t close.” They write to me. They send me photos of their whole family around the table with my runner. The effect is unexplainable.
Last year, on PBS there was a transmission on master artisans. They made a little documentary on Italian master artisans and I was in it. And you can’t imagine, since this little documentary came out in the U.S., people come in groups sent by the Travel Corporation and they say, “I saw you on TV on PBS!” They go crazy. And then directly from America, I heard from two families that said they added Perugia to their itinerary in order to visit me because they saw me on TV in the U.S. Can you imagine?
Incredible!
Abroad I’m considered a heroine, here nothing. That’s how it is. But I don’t consider myself a heroine, I just consider myself crazy. But if only there were more crazy people like this, who want to safeguard these traditions.
This interview has been translated from Italian and edited and condensed for length and clarity.
Further Reading
This interview was conducted for a feature in the spring 2023 edition of Bellissimo, the quarterly e-magazine published by Italy Magazine, which will be released soon for paying subscribers. Subscribe here to make sure you receive it.
I also mentioned the atelier in issue #23 of this newsletter, which was dedicated to why you should plan a trip to Umbria.
The collaboration with Fendi mentioned in the interview was for a project called Hand in Hand, for which Fendi asked one artisan from each of Italy’s 20 regions to create a limited edition baguette. You can see all of them here.
You can watch the full episode of the PBS series “Dream of Italy,” which features Marta, here.