Rosa Menni Giolli and the Passion for Batik. Middle and Far Eastern Influences Between the Two Wars

This paper focuses on the protodesigner Rosa Menni Giolli and her passion for batik. She is chosen as an example of emancipation and female vitality among several Italian “thread designers” (Papini, 1923) during the third and fourth decade of the twentieth century. The case of Rosa Menni is also and example for mixing artistic and crafts technicians and a woman of early emancipation. She successfully opened in 1921 her enterprise named Le Stoffe della Rosa and was the head of her-made laboratory which employed several workers. She also exemplifies the effects of fascination for Middle and Far East in Italy during the time among the two world wars (’20 and ’30). On the trade, exhibitions and Mediterranean exchanges were easy to find stimuli for Italian textiles in renewing decorative forms, patters, and special makings influenced by distant cultures. Often these external inspirations depend from nationals’ political cultures and colonial exchanges as well from the need of defense artisanal processes against the increasing predominance of industrial ones. In the batik method Rosa Menni found an old Oriental technique that gave her the opportunity to renew her repertoire by combining her artistic inclination with craft, her love for woodcut and precious material such as silk, the experimentation with patters such as colors and her strong knowledge on art and culture that she shared with her husband Raffaele Giolli.