Museo del Tessuto e della Tappezzeria “Vittorio Zironi”

The Museum of Texture and Upholstery, which was founded by the upholstery art master Vittorio Zironi and originally hosted in 1966 in some rooms of Palazzo Salina Brazzetti, was moved in 1990 to Villa Spada, also known as Villa Ravone taking its name from the nearby river. The collections, which were assembled by the founder soon after the war with the help of colleagues and collectors, initially had the peculiarity of including fabrics, accessories, trimmings and processing tools used over the centuries in the field of upholstery. Later on the collection was extended to finished products like dresses, embroidered objects, drawings, flags, banners, archival finds and a library specialised in fabrics and interior decoration. The value of the Museum - donated by the Zironi family to the Municipality of Bologna in 2016 – is the diverse origin of its more than six thousand fabric samples and the time line they represent. The most ancient samples are the Coptic ones (Egypt) coming from some funeral sets of the period between the 4th and 12th century. However, the largest part of the collection consists of velvets, lampases, damasks, brocades, bandera canvases, taffetas, liserée, gobelines, made by important manufacturers, both local and foreign, between the 16th and 19th century. The oriental fabrics are also precious: Japanese, Persian and Caucasian but also Egyptian and Turkish, including a rich collection of ottoman caftans of the 18th-19th century. Other important collections are made of robes and liturgical sets dating between the 18th and 20th century; the hats and dresses made by renowned modistries and tailors, not only from urban areas, between the 19th and 20th century; the embroidered artifacts, both Eastern and Italian, like Aemilia Ars (Bologna) and Ranieri of Sorbello (Perugia), which describe a craft capable of adapting ancient processing techniques at the beginning of the 20th century. In some rooms there are also some fabric production tools like a loom dating back to the end of the 14th century and another from the 18th century, to which the Jacquard system with perforated cards was later applied. In recent years the museum has distinguished itself thanks to the activity of the renowned restoration laboratory present within its premises.