We spent a week following wool through the mountains of Abruzzo

From sheep and former mills to natural dye experiments, we learned about the landscape, history and people shaping the region’s relationship with wool today.

Why we came to Abruzzo

Our interest in wool began with sheep. Unlike plant-based fibres, wool comes from a living being and carries a relationship to the breed, the land it grazes on and the people who care for it. We were curious about its natural performance properties, but also the biodiversity behind it. This led us to write a first long-piece on the possibilities of wool and some amazing projects around the world.

After our trip to Vietnam, where we spent time in Macy’s home country experimenting with natural indigo, Virginia began looking for somewhere we could continue learning together in Italy. She came across Bocca di Valle, a creative residency founded by Silvia Bianchi and Luca Spinogatti in the Abruzzo mountains. The region has one of the largest sheep populations in Italy, and the residency connected very closely with the questions around wool we had already begun exploring.

Silvia and Luca’s house is set within a national park, so staying there gave us a chance to step away from our usual digital research and learn from being in the place itself. We spent time with local creators, visited workshops and sites connected to the region’s rich textile history and worked with plants gathered from the surrounding landscape.

What we began to understand once we arrived was how much the industry had changed. Wool was still being produced across the region, yet many of the mills and processing facilities that once gave it value had disappeared. Throughout the residency, we kept thinking: what would it take to make local wool valuable again?

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Ani’s pre-trip thoughts: Wool piqued my interest because, unlike plant-based fibres, it begins with a living being. I was drawn to its natural performance properties, but also to the relationship between wool, biodiversity and the landscape, especially once I started to understand just how many breeds and fibre-producing animals exist.

Vi’s pre-trip thoughts: I go through phases of obsession with different crafts, from sewing to photography to sketching. Lately, I have been experimenting with ecoprinting and natural dyes, and it was time to share this with the team, and invite them to Italy, my home country. I was looking for residencies that were aligned with our vision, and as soon as I found Bocca di Valle, my research ended; it was the perfect match to host my girls. I had already done a project in a sneaker factory, but it was the other, slower side of production in Abruzzo that intrigued me.

Ling’s pre-trip thoughts: When the opportunity for this trip came up, I found myself in a transitional phase in life. Italy came at the perfect time to experience something new and return to an immersive style of learning alongside nature. I was drawn to the mountains’ texture and the rich biodiversity of the region and was excited to connect with people who hold generational knowledge of Abruzzo’s landscape.

This article follows what we learned about Abruzzo’s wool economy, how it became disconnected, what localism in practice actually requires, and the people working to find new possibilities for its wool today.

A landscape shaped by wool

Abruzzo had the perfect conditions for a wool economy to grow. Sheep and goats grazed across the mountains, and water was readily available. We were told that the mountain works almost like a sponge, holding water in its caves and crevices before releasing it into the land below. Water pooled beneath the plains, where families could access it by digging wells.

This meant that many households had access to the water needed to keep animals and process wool. By the 1800s, there were reportedly around five million sheep in the region. And wool had become an important part of everyday life and the local economy.

The movement of sheep also shaped the landscape of the town. Routes were created to guide flocks between seasonal pastures. The largest roads were around 32 metres wide, with smaller routes reaching around 12 metres. Shepherds passed through toll points to pay for access to grazing land, and families marked their sheep with their own symbols to show ownership. It was truly a way of life, and society functioned around the sheep.

transhumance: the seasonal movement of livestock and their herders between fixed high-altitude or northern pastures in the summer and low-altitude or southern valleys in the winter

Rivers played an important role in preparing the wool. Sheep were walked through the river so that their movement would help clean the fleece. The shepherd could be paid more depending on how many times the animals passed through the water and how clean the wool became! This was called “jumped wool” :) The limestone and calcium in the river were said to wash the fleece without stripping away all of its lanolin, helping the wool retain its natural water resistance.

Water is so pure and clean that two of the biggest pasta factories in Italy (De Cecco and Delverde) are in the ancient wool village, because the quality is directly linked to that of the water used.

We got to see this relationship between water, land, animals, and textile production at the House of Water (Gualchiera Orsatti in Fara San Martino), a former wool-processing building dating from the early 1800s! It was built directly over a river, which powered the machinery inside.

Back then, spinning and weaving were done in people’s homes before the finished cloth was brought to places like the House of Water for further processing. The building was described as a “walker house” because material was always moving forward through the production process.

Families also lived on the upper floor, which may be one reason the building was preserved while other mills were later converted into hydroelectric plants. Frescoes inspired by images from Pompeii still cover its walls, showing wool-processing methods with roots far beyond the building itself. Check out some of the pictures below!

The guide who took us around the House of Water, Barbara dalla Costa from Majella Coop, is a historic guide full of knowledge of the Majella park. She is also passionate about Natural Dyes and explained that they were grown so widely that they are not always found all around Abruzzo’s ecosystems. We also loved to see the machines for carding the wool were using natural Fuller’s teasels. Again, natural processes and fashion were one.

The rising fame of Abruzzo’s wool

What was really mind-boggling to us was seeing how much wool is being produced in Abruzzo, while so much of the industry that once supported it has disappeared.

The taranta blanket originated here and became so valuable that trade routes were actually developed around its movement during the Middle Ages.

The Renaissance wool industry was so vital that major ruling families invested fortunes in it; while the Medici directly controlled sheep-farming territories in Abruzzo, northern courts like Milan heavily financed the trade to secure the precious raw material for their own textile mills.

The De’ Medici family controlled wool production and the fiefs of Santo Stefano di Sessanio in Abruzzo from 1579, linking themselves to the tradition of its wool, while the renowned tradition of “taranta” blankets flourished particularly in Taranta Peligna and the Aventino Valley area. Driven by his lifelong fascination with engineering and automation, Leonardo da Vinci studied the traditional textile processing methods in Abruzzo and developed innovative designs to improve the efficiency of local weaving looms.

Later, the introduction of the Jacquard loom in the nineteenth century allowed mills to produce the reversible, patterned blankets that became characteristic of the area.

As you can imagine, traditional wool blankets weighing several kilos became less practical for everyday life, so naturally, the once major product for the region began to decline. Some weighed around 20kg, and as tastes and living conditions changed, demand began to fall. At the same time, cheaper synthetic fibres entered the industry, and the market was becoming oversaturated with these beautiful blankets.

Many local producers continued making the same kinds of products on machinery designed for heavier yarns, with little investment in developing lighter fabrics or new uses for the wool. Few had the foresight to innovate or adapt to changing consumer desires, so as businesses struggled or closed, the network around them became smaller too. Washing facilities disappeared, processing became harder to access locally, and more wool had to travel elsewhere before it could be turned into yarn or fabric.

How Local Wool Lost its value

Here comes another highlight of the trip - La Porta dei Parchi - an amazing farm, restaurant, and hotel. We went for lunch with Silvia and Luca, and had some of the best types of Pecorino cheese we ever had. Sheep ricotta was just delicious, so was the ravioli.

La Porta dei Parchi was Founded in 1977 by Nunzio and Manuela, and is now famous around Italy for its program “adopt a sheep”, which allows anyone to support the project and receive products in exchange, while keeping the knowledge around transhumance alive. They still practice it, with 1,500 sheep that are brought around mountains to eat fresh grass, avoiding feed transport emissions, and preserving ecosystems.

Shepherds don’t have an easy life. Economic pressure is rising, along with regulations that are always stricter around food safety and animal welfare, and the depreciation of by-products such as wool or fertilizer.

Shepherds now have to pay to dispose of a useful local resource that would have also provided an additional source of income.

When they started, wool used to sell for 50,000 lire/kg (around 25€, which at the time was more equivalent to 150€). Now it’s bought at 0.30€/kg, which doesn’t even cover the costs of shearing and transport.

The maths here is very representative of the value we are allocating to local natural raw materials, in a world of plastic.

Localism is more complicated than it sounds

If you are a returning reader, you know how much we love localism. We don’t believe in universal solutions, because each geography and culture is different, and supply chains should be shorter and adapted to what each region provides. However, localism isn’t always so easy, because often processing solutions require economies of scale that are not available locally.

Take the example of Abruzzo, which currently has an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 sheep. The only weaving company left is currently importing wool from outside Italy, because there is no middle supply chain between farmers and yarn producers. This is a case where localism could be possible in theory, because the raw material is available, but everything else is missing. Wool needs to be washed, scoured, carbonised, scoured, carded, and in some cases also combed, before being spun. A functioning local textile economy requires knowledge, equipment, infrastructure, investment, markets, and many different people.

When some parts of the network disappear, even if the raw material is available, localism isn’t possible, and it is much more complicated than we think. The cost of raw materials doesn’t cover processing costs, so it is not worth it for shepherds to store the wool.

We had the opportunity to speak with Benedetta Morucci from La Mantera, who is challenging the current wool waste in Abruzzo. She has worked in the fashion industry for her entire life, and knows wool processing and certifications very well. She started sourcing wool from farmers and taking it to the closest processing factory available, in Biella, in the north of Italy, 730km away. This process represents a wider problem in the fashion industry in which fibres travel long distances because the necessary processing no longer exists nearby.

Biella is globally renowned as the “Wool Capital” due to its centuries-old tradition of elite textile manufacturing and premier wool processing. Biella successfully industrialised and pivoted to luxury markets, whereas Abruzzo’s wool sector collapsed due to its dependency on transhumance and a failure to mechanise.

Benedetta did extensive research for the best and most sustainable partners for processing and natural dyeing, but it is difficult to maintain an accessible price with low volumes. The challenge is not a lack of care or raw material. The missing links make it difficult for people to act on that care.

A beautiful quote from her:The further you get from the natural process, the more complex the issues become later on because you’re working against nature.

What is the cost of no innovation?

As mentioned above, Abruzzo’s wool blankets were famous all over the world.

From the economic boom of wool blankets in the 19th century, when they were iconic household items, demand decreased, taste changed, and family mills could not adapt to globalisation and changing market dynamics, so they started shutting down.

But the wool itself never stopped being produced. Many sheep in Abruzzo are raised for milk primarily, but still need to be sheared every year. Their fleeces need somewhere to go, even when the wool is no longer the main reason for keeping the animals.

Without the local processing needed to turn wool into yarn and local markets to use it, much of Abruzzo’s wool has very little value as a textile fiber. Now there is only one weaving factory in Abruzzo, Arcolaio Tessile, which we had to visit - of course.

We had the amazing opportunity of meeting with Olga, the CEO and granddaughter of the founder, and Maurizio, head of design. Arcolaio Tessile was born in the early 50s, using Jacquard looms, which had completely revolutionised the market during the previous century. Olga still remembers lunch with all the employees at their house, because the weaving was done on the bottom floor, before they moved to the current location. Spinning was often done independently in people’s homes - now they buy yarn.

The company managed to adapt to an ever-changing world; when blankets weren’t so fashionable anymore, they updated their machines and designs, even doing just simple, high-quality single-colour blankets. They also make sable sets, curtains, and different kinds of prints. They also have a residency hosting artists that have access to all their machines, and do stunning collaborations with various designers.

Evolution didn’t mean giving up tradition; it meant responding to new needs and trends, while keeping the same structure and attention to quality.

“Tessere è Resistere” (“To weave is to resist”)

Said Olga, when talking about where she gets the strength to run a business when the ecosystem around it is missing. She doesn’t want to end this family tradition, and although she would love to use Abruzzo’s wool, she knows it would require a deeper revolution to preserve the value of wool in the region. She hopes that one day there will be the vision and strategic commitment to invest in bringing back the local supply chain.

Sometimes preservation keeps knowledge alive, however, other times, it might just leave that knowledge with fewer ways to continue, and it seems that the family of Arcolaio managed to find the right balance between innovation and tradition.

The landscape still holds knowledge

Exploring Abruzzo’s natural landscape, we witnessed its remarkable biodiversity. One third of the territory is made up of protected national parks and nature reserves, with some considered UNESCO World Heritage sites. Walking through neighbouring towns, you can see fossils in the stone dating back to Pangaea, when much of the landmass was underwater. This biodiversity brings an abundance of plants with both medicinal properties and beautiful natural pigments.

At The House of Water, we got to see the range of colours possible; there was a catalogue of colours customers could choose from when ordering wool blankets, all dyed with local plants and flowers, including indigo (once cultivated specifically for dye, now widespread). Fabric was dyed in heated pots, and the process was water-intensive, requiring five litres of water per 100 grams of material.

Plants were cultivated to be used to dye wool for patterns and prints traditional to Abruzzo. These plants can be found growing in forests and across the landscape in abundance; the diversity within the landscape is now an untapped resource.

Luckily, some artists are bringing this traditional knowledge into modern practice like Donata Gaeta, a local ceramist and textile artist. We visited her home studio, where she experiments with natural pigments from a range of plants and found materials. It was inspiring to see her process of iterations made in the colour process, reflecting the biodiversity of plants in her own backyard.

Comparing her colour samples with our own was really interesting. Dyeing at this scale was new to us and involved a lot of trial and error, and our colours varied in shade depending on the plant and the amount of chemical added to each fabric. As you can see, our colours took a range of shades depending on the plant and the specific amount of chemical we added to each fabric. We also experimented with eco-printing, pressing leaves directly onto fabric and steaming it, and creating a negative, imprinting a soaked fabric onto a second sheet.

Much of what emerged was the result of the process itself. A mossy green from the rosemary bush at Silvia and Luca’s place became the neutral base for many of our other colours. The most surprising result was a deep indigo from birch leaves in our eco-print. Chamomile and onion skins (the onions rescued for a quiche at lunch) earn honourable mentions.

These experiments explored the region’s biodiversity and textile knowledge through an artistic lens. Foraging for our materials and experimenting while situated in a beautiful mountain landscape made us appreciate the deep ecological knowledge Abruzzo holds within it.

Our experiments show how this material knowledge can remain present even after the surrounding industry that supports it has weakened. The material knowledge is still present, and the natural environment grows on, but our relationship to it has changed. What happens when people no longer work with what a landscape naturally possesses? How do we value it and what do we create with it?

Keeping tradition in motion

Abruzzo was special for a lot of reasons mentioned, but one of the main ones was the people working to keep tradition alive. It was interesting to see a shift in people who are bringing traditional knowledge into motion through new, contemporary projects.

We met two friends who are doing just that. Francesca and Mia both moved from the States to Italy to return to the traditional way of creating and living with the landscape. Mia (@mialarocca) is a social beekeeper, and Francesca (@localraisin) studied animal husbandry, which led her to cheese-making, shearing and working directly with farmers and eventually to sheepskins and tanning. Both are actively involved in facilitating community events in Mia’s Pacentro workshop: setteuarciate.

After living and working with shepherds, they began to think about the animals and farmers behind leather production. One of the artists who Mia hosted in residency, Mal, created a line of leather bags from hides Francesca tanned in Pacentro, tangible evidence of the life the animal lived, meant to honour both it and the farmer who raised it.

“Tanning a hide is a small act against decomposition. An act of appreciation for the animal that lived, preserving the coat it carried.”

Both are driven by a desire to honour animals, materials and local practices and represent a new generation of people looking to create opportunities of connection with the land.

What now?

Abruzzo’s landscape brought us so much inspiration and understanding of the importance and potential that comes from honouring and working with the land, but also the challenges that come with a modern, industrialized world that is disconnected from natural processes.

While we learnt so much about the landscape itself, it was the conversations with residents, artists, and entrepreneurs that stayed with us most, and we know they will inspire our future work and collaborations.

Adaptation and survival are recurring here: although in very different ways, La Porta dei Parchi, la Mantera, and Arcolaio Tessile are all trying to preserve tradition in an innovative way. It is clear, however, that they would benefit from receiving more support from the wider ecosystem, helping them to connect the dots.

Our goal is to continue telling stories that connect people to the environment and promote projects that support innovation within biodiverse regions. We honour the people and land we had the privilege of connecting with in Abruzzo.

_{A special thank you to Calik Denim for providing some of our test materials!}