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Signa, Tuscany - The Straw and Weaving Museum Domenico Michelacci

Via degli Alberti 11, Signa
This new museum, unique in its kind in Italy and one of the very few in Europe, marks the establishment of a regional, national and international centre dedicated to a craft that plays a universal value in the history of man and experienced an incredible evolution in Tuscany, despite the many vicissitudes. Although this activity was carried out in several areas of the region, the main centre was Florence and its province. It was in the first decades of the 18th century that Domenico Michelacci, known as “Il Bolognino”, started experimenting here in Signa new techniques to produce and collect wheat in order to improve the production of straw for the weaving activity.

In this case it was a matter of recovering a popular wide-spread tradition. The Museum aims at offering itself as a centre for the collection, study, research, preservation and exhibition of an extraordinary patrimony that risked being lost for ever.
The first rooms display extremely interesting samples of straw and woven products and of the most famous articles ever produced with these materials, which include famous hats exported worldwide. There are also several old machines employed in the different stages of production that show the complexity of this craft. The different products arranged by place of origin show the commitment to this activity of the centres involved in its production.

The exhibition will be periodically renewed in order to tackle different types of issues: anthropological and cultural, artistic, economic, social and technical issues in order to prove in the first place that the production of straw objects has been for a long time the most important economic activity in Tuscany and certainly one of the oldest in the life of men.
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