Day two in Milan. I know I am really behind on these postings things have been really crazy with travel and now that I am in London we have had a lot of work. I will be updating as a fast as possible on my trip from this point.
So on our second day in Milano (as the Italians say), we went to a few places dealing with textiles. The first was a big design studio for the opera La Scala house settings and costumes, called the Ansaldo Workshops. We saw how they design sets, the actual production of sets, backdrops, and models. Then they showed us the room where they store some of their most famous costumes. They were all beautifully made and fragile. They had tailors and seamstresses going making new clothing for the ballet and new opera season. While we were there that opera house was performing an opera based on Pink Floyd music. The picture of the advertisement was on a previous post. We had to walk along these metal catwalks above the work space which was not fun for people like me who are slightly afraid of heights and of falling. Milan also lacks air conditioning and when it is 90 degrees in a non air conditioning building you start melting. I don't know how they work and live in those conditions. It is like they don't sweat or something.
We literally had to run to our appointment on the other side of town. This meant catching two metros and running along streets. We went down a back passage of the "famous" galleria shopping area there. Our meeting was at the Zucci Textile Museum. Most the pictures from above are from this location, since we were not allowed to photograph the workshops from our first meeting. The Zucci Museum is a display and educational center to learn about block printing on textiles. They no longer produce their printing in this manner but instead have copied those prints digitally and now print them. They had many thousands of these blocks that were collected over time. Some are very old. We learned the process of making a single block pattern which is very complicated and takes all together three large blocks. In the pictures you can see one wall that had some blocks on display, all their walls were covered in these blocks. I especially liked the tower they made of them cutting through the ceiling to the floor above. We were able to watch a master printer use on of these block patters (see pictures above) and then we ourselves were able to print a scarf or bag. I choose a scarf because I plan on framing it and hanging it up. You can see me in the process of printing it and the final product above.
After all this running around Milan my friends and I were hungry. So we walked to a pharmacy for some friends needs and on the way there passed a pizza place. So the 7 of us went there for some dinner. When I looked at the menu I saw that pizza was 5 euro, we all agreed this had to mean one slice. NO, it wasn't ! It was the entire pizza! I had to take a picture (as shown). It was thin crust and I pretty much devoured the entire thing. That was one of the best pizzas I have ever had! At least Milan impressed me on one thing, it was its pizza.
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