Antonilla Cantelli

Italiano

In 1927, at the age of 13, Antonilla Cantelli started attending the historical school of Church of Sacro Cuore in Bologna.

Her teacher, Olga Grassi, was one of the best Aemilia Ars lacemakers as well as a very good and severe teacher. After four years of daily lessons the young girl learnt fast to manage many feminine works, but her preference went soon to needle lace, in the style and the tradition of Aemilia Ars.

Love for perfection, fantasy, creativity: Antonilla Cantelli has all this gifts. The lace design often come from reputed artists, but it's the lacemaker that give it life executing it with needle and thread.

In the '30s she met Countess Cavazza, leader of the Lace Section, only surviving for a long time of the old Aemilia Ars Society: a sort of woman manager that promoted a lot of activities not only to help women economically, but also to educate them to beauty and harmony: working for Aemilia Ars meant, at that time, not only looking for perfection in working, but also adopting a particular way of life, according to the elegance of those craftworks.

Time has passed; but even nowadays, meeting Antonilla Cantelli, looking at her way of working, looking at the way she gives life to a lace, we feel some way the charm of those days.

All this started in 1927, all this is going on today; a group of passionates is now learning and working  with this special woman and some of them have already the courage to start lace works, difficult and very, very long, not so different in quality from those of the past.

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