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 Textile design  Diagonali 91 (Diagonals 91), with Paola Bonfante and Lalla Ranza, 1991

Cotton warp in five combinations of two colours
Ground weft: unrefined fine linen
Overshot weft: tape designed by us, printed in two colour selections

680 wall-hangings for Costa Classica, a Costa Crociere holiday cruiser, designed together with Paola Bonfante e Lalla Ranza, as a development of my  Diagonale 4  (1985). We had to tackle very special organisation problems to satisfy this important order. Working out the perfect color sequence for the tape required much preliminary testing done by colouring the tape by hand, after which we wove several metres of the panel width in order to check how the pattern developed. We then had the tape printed in two different color schemes, which we then repeatedly tested. Once we were happy with the printed tape, we chose five couples of colors for the warps and two different patterns for the same weave. We then chose a dozen weavers to help us, who were both technically skilled and reliable for deadlines. I still wonder how we managed! Within two and a half months since the placing of the order, the wall-hangings had been woven, finished and delivered on board. They were all beautifully luminous, and all different from one another because of the slight staggering of the color segments. They were an abstract equivalent of the many colorful coastlines that that beautiful ship would see.

 

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