Fiori di ricami nuouamente posti in luce ne i quali sono varii et diversi dissegni di lavori; come Merli, Bavari, Manichetti, & altre sorti di opere, che al presente sono in uso, utilissimi ad ogni stato di Donne.

Fiori di ricami nuouamente posti in luce ne i quali sono varii et diversi dissegni di lavori; come Merli, Bavari, Manichetti, & altre sorti di opere, che al presente sono in uso, utilissimi ad ogni stato di Donne.

Bologna : Giovanni Rossi, 1593.

1 volume ; 201 x 143 x 5 mm.

This is a PRELIMINARY RECORD. It may contain incorrect information. Please email catalog@folger.edu for assistance.

Italy -- Bologna, -- publication place.

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From dealer's description: "A UNIQUE RENAISSANCE EMBROIDERY PATTERN BOOK No. 7201 [TEXTILE PATTERN BOOK.] PASINI, Tommaso. Fiori di ricami nuouamente posti in luce ne i quali sono varii et diversi dissegni di lavori; come Merli, Bavari, Manichetti, & altre sorti di opere, che al presente sono in uso, utilissimi ad ogni stato di Donne. Bologna: Giovanni Rossi, 1593. Only surviving copy of an unrecorded edition of Ravenna/Bologna publisher, bookseller, and designer Tommaso Pasini's book of embroidery patterns for women and girls. Arthur Lotz, the first major bibliographer and historian of pattern books, wrote in the introduction to his 1933 Bibliographie der Modelbücher, that: …[pattern books] were produced in Germany, Italy, France and England, often in many editions, and evidently sold well and were widely distributed, but relatively few copies of them have survived. This is not surprising, as these books were not intended to be displayed as showpieces on library shelves, but rather found their way into the sewing rooms of women who were quite unbibliophilic and not very delicate with such collections of patterns, removing sheets that they needed as templates, damaging them with tracings and finally throwing them away completely. (p. 1; our tr.) This is a bit unfair, as we know that these books were not meant to survive; they were intended to be used to pieces, and discarded, in some ways like the cartoons that were used by tapestry-weavers. Some of the earliest German Modelbücher even contained instructions on how to use the books, and what tools were needed to make the best use of them—bodkins and scissors and razors. Most surviving pre-1600 editions are not complete, and bear greater or lesser signs of use. But our book, an unrecorded edition of Pasini's 18 embroidery designs, has somehow survived complete, unrestored, in its original binding. It shows signs of use—-stains, tears, thumbing—as well as two early manuscript custodial remarks, but was never subjected to the direct use it was produced for. Arthur Lotz did not know of our edition, but he refers to a "second edition" printed by Giovanni Rossi in 1591 (which survives in a single copy, at BnF), and none earlier is known.1 That edition had a slightly different title, and its dedication was to a different woman. Pasini dedicated our book to Angelica Rasponi Papini, for her use in the service of her husband's virtue and glory. According to Femke Speelberg, writing in Fashion & Virtue: Textile Patterns and the Print Revolution, 1520-1620 (2015), the study of early pattern books necessarily requires the historiographical application of three disciplines—textiles, patterns, and bibliography—in order to come to an understanding of the books' roles in Renaissance fashion and design. No easy task—the patterns were often copied by competing printers and publishers; the books themselves are a fragmentary, disparate record; and most of the actual textiles haven't survived at all. Pasini's book was specifically for …ogni stato di Donne, with the term stato likely meaning women and girls of any age, and of any social rank. (Why would he exclude anyone?) Speelberg writes: The introduction of printed textile pattern books happened at a time when the demand for such models reached an unprecedented high. Socioeconomic changes and fashion trends as well as innovations in the European textile industry had accorded the art of textile decoration a more central role in the middle- and upperclass household and in the everyday lives of women. Although women are known to have taken on distinguished commissions as professional embroiderers during the Middle Ages, their exclusion from guild membership now curtailed their involvement in commercial and artisanal activities. Instead, the official decorum placed emphasis on the important role women played in the domestic sphere as wives, mothers, and general managers of the household. Aside from arranging daily meals for family, staff, and occasional visitors, their most important responsibilities included producing, maintaining, and decorating textiles for clothing and the soft furnishings of the interior. These textiles, ranging from the extremely functional to the highly ornamental, were omnipresent in the household, and in their adornment and the inclusion of personal details such as names, initials, and family mottos and crests in silk, silver, or gold, women found a means of self-expression. The transformation of the home that could be achieved through tapestries, richly embroidered wall hangings, and linen goods gave women the opportunity to participate in the formal representation of the family to the outside world. (p. 18.) We note that two or three of the designs in our book were copied (not quite exactly) by Elisabetta Parasole in her 1597 Studio delle virtuose dame, the first pattern book that was certainly written and designed by a woman. The present copy of Pasini's book survives as an exceptional and unique witness to the the nexus of printing, fashion, and the role of women in the domestic economy of the Renaissance. $14,500 Oblong quarto (with vertical chain lines): 201 x 143 x 5 mm. [I-II], III-XX ff., [A]4, B-C8. =20 ff. Contemporary binding alla rustica in thin card, lettered in manuscript on spine at an early date, gatherings sewn with a long stitch all-along, directly through back. Covers worn and soiled, splits in spine, staining to inside covers. Interior: Staining and soiling, pages thumbed, C2 torn in gutter margin (not near printed area); C8 with marginal tears, not touching printed area. Provenance: Early custodial remark to inside upper cover: Del Conte Pietro Pierucci; later remark to tail margin of title, x'ed out at an early date, and now illegible to us. Acquired by W. S. Cotter from Gilhofer & Ranschburg, 2025. References: Speelberg, Femke, Fashion & Virtue. Textile Patterns and the Print Revolution, 1520-1620, New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Vol. lxxiii, no. 2, 2015 (intro and passim); cf. EDIT16 81984; cf. Lotz, Arthur, Bibliographie der Modelbücher, Leipzig: Hiersemann, 1933, intro, nos. 122 and 123a. 1Fabrizio Govi has done the bibliographical work, and eloquently summarizes the position of our book with respect to adjacent editions. He writes: "Tommaso Pasini’s embroidery pattern book was previously known in an edition printed for him by Giovanni Rossi in Bologna in 1591, of which only one copy is recorded in the BNF in Paris. The title page refers to it as a second edition ("seconda impressione"), but either no earlier edition has survived or, as Lotz states, we have to consider as its first edition Giovanni Battista Ciotti’s publication printed in Venice in the same year by Francesco de Franceschi, Prima parte de’ fiori, e disegni di varie sorti di ricami moderni. Come merli, bavari, manichetti, & altri nobili lavori, che al presente sono in uso, which contains the same samples as Pasini’s. To complicate matters further, in 1591 a third collection with the same patterns and exactly the same title as Pasini’s appeared, first printed by de Franceschi for Matteo Florimi (and then reprinted several times in Siena and Florence), which Lotz considers a mere reprint without any originality. The present copy is thus apparently the only known copy of a reprint of the 1591 Pasini/Rossi edition. This new "third" edition ("terza impressione" as stated in the title) differs from the 1591 edition in the title page, which has a woodcut ornament instead of Rossi’s device of Mercury; it also has a new dedication by the editor Tommaso Pasini to Angelica Rasponi Papini, dated Bologna, 8 April 1593 (the 1591 edition has an undated dedication by Pasini to Valeria Rossi Ghisolieri). Moreover, in the 1593 edition plate 4 has become plate 9, plates 6 and 12 are inverted, in plates 6 and 7 the woodblocks are reversed, and finally, while in the 1591 edition plate 4 repeats plate 9, in that of 1591 plate 4 repeats plate 17." (© Fabrizio Govi, 2024.)"

Ordered from W. S. Cotter Rare Books, D9803, 2025-02-18, email quote

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