Time woven into lace
There are things you cannot touch with indifference: an old lace doily, a piece of antique fabric, a yellowed thread, a tiny bead that has outlived more than one decade. I love to adorn my work with such materials: lace motifs, doilies, antique fabrics, threads, beads. Sometimes they become the decoration of a piece, sometimes its heart. Vintage and antiques have repeatedly become the foundation of my work: outfits for artist dolls were born from old doilies, lace and fabrics.
The warmth of vintage materials
There is something special and warm in old materials. They come from a time when things were not made cheaper for mass production but, on the contrary, made better than they needed to be. In every hand stitch on a doily you feel boundless love: someone’s hands, someone’s patience, someone’s long evenings. Antique fabrics keep traces of the same attitude to things: their density, weave and softness cannot be matched by modern factory cloth. And Maltese silk, elite and wonderfully soft, still responds under the fingers as if it had been woven yesterday.
It seems to me that the warmth of those who made such things stays in them. When I take them into work, I am not just crocheting an outfit but continuing someone else’s story: my thread lies beside the old one, and together they become a whole. A doll’s dress comes out very small, yet different times and different hands meet in it, and that meeting makes it alive.
How an outfit is born from an old material
From one old doily can come a bodice, a hem or a sleeve trim. Antique fabric also finds its place in an outfit: it pairs with lace and with my crochet. I choose a fragment so that the lace pattern or the texture of the fabric lies on the dress beautifully and naturally, and then join it with my crochet of the finest silk.
Where vintage comes from
I used to look for vintage and antique materials exclusively on foreign marketplaces. They were brought to me from flea markets in Italy, France and England, where old doilies, lace and fabrics sometimes lie in boxes among random things, waiting for their hour. Now I mostly use my own accumulated strategic reserves and put every piece to use with care.
With care, as if it were family
Vintage and antiques do not come easily to me, so I treat them with care. Before starting work I wash the material thoroughly: first with a stain remover, then with laundry detergents. Then I press it carefully and see how it behaves, as if getting to know it anew. This helps me understand what it is ready for and how best to work with it.
Nothing passes without a trace
I never throw away badly damaged pieces. To me they are not leftovers but small precious fragments of someone’s work. They find a place in new pieces as separate motifs and go on living.
After all, every material, like every thing, wants to believe that its time has not yet ended.
For those who choose Ombra di seta
Every piece by Ombra di seta is made only from premium materials: from the finest silk to vintage and antiques selected with love. I make no compromises, because I know you choose my work for a beauty you want to keep. Each outfit passes through my hands from the first stitch to the last, and there is nothing accidental in it.
Ombra di seta: silk, time and love in every stitch.
