From precious lace to virus guards: more than 20,000 were donated by Alessano’s artisan workshop Tre Campane. The use of ancient looms and herbs for botanical reasons
Producing textiles also to help others means creating a web of solidarity. That’s what Massimo Liso thought when the pandemic broke out. His art and craft workshop Tre Campane has been operating since 1950 precisely to make warps that make people’s eyes and bodies feel good. His father Michele had come from Campania all the way to Alessano, just north of Capo di Leuca, the most southeastern point in Italy, precisely to find a new land in which to sew his canvases. Massimo and Gabriele, his sons, still use those looms, and especially the more than 1,500 original designs that they keep guarded in a secret place, like a magic book, a treasure chest of secrets and threads.
All those natural fibers in cotton, linen and cashmere. that now literally drive designers in search of inspiration crazy with joy, during the closure of Italy were in danger of losing, if only momentarily, their reason for existing. So Le Tre Campane decided to roll up their sleeves for others: the textiles became masks, a thin strip of great safety that Massimo gave to tens of thousands of people, around the Capo di Leuca, on the Adriatic and Ionian coasts, to law enforcement and health services.
The looms practically never stopped and this small workshop worked hard, achieving a record of solidarity production that even crossed national borders, reaching Switzerland, for example. “One of our father’s mottos was that when you touch a fabric it’s as if you have to love it, so all the more so if it saves your life,” says Massimo. “We immediately realized that we had all the knowledge and simple mechanical technologies needed, set to work, and now we are proud to have contributed substantially to the prevention of the spread of this virus.
Right on the wall stands the huge photographic portrait of the father showing his joy of living and working, just as the furnishings and precisely the machinery that pulls the threads are largely those that were there at the origin of this craft adventure in which a thought for others has always been the cotton of every gesture. Among the most beautiful creations are the Macramé knot lace that arrived in Salento with the Arab and Turkish invasions, skillfully reworked by Salento women.
“Who knows, many years from now, the Three Bells will also be remembered for the fabric masks of this pandemic,” Massimo concludes. “Now ours are aesthetically refined, but we are also proud of the first ones, which were cruder and yet so useful for the community. Time marches on, and even Massimo, who divides his time between his father’s workshop, his colorful, textured Emporio Mediterraneo in nearby Tricase, and the Salento countryside where he goes to gather herbs, drawing inspiration for new motifs for his canvases, is plotting again, with his ever-moving hands and his raspy, subtle voice.
Article by Luca Bergamin Corriere della Sera
