Bandera

Bandera was a strong cotton twill in ivory or ecru, attributed to a probably mythical Monsù Bandera, but certainly manufactured in Piedmont as early as 1600 and, at that time, used universally. The ladies of the House of Savoy, awaiting the arrival from Paris of the second Royal Madame, Giovanna Battista di Savoia Nemours, reigning after the death of her husband Carlo Emanuele II, used that cotton twill to cover the chairs, armchairs, sofas, worn-out damasks, and velvets that could not be replaced because the treasury had been “impoverished by many wars….” The ladies did even more. Copying designs from the stuccoed walls and the painted flowers in the boudoir, they embroidered a bandera using a herringbone stitch, a stem stitch, and a chain-stitch, thus giving his name to this embroidery that is definitely of Piedmontese origin. Handed down from mother to daughter, and from one lady of the manor to another, the manufacture of this fabric was taught in schools and it was produced to order in workshops up until the 1930s. It was later resumed by Consolata Pralormo who, finding herself in difficulty during the restoration of the bandera-embroidered canopy of a four-poster bed in her own castle, first sent some women of the village who knew plain embroidery to learn the bandera technique from the surviving experts. Then, in 1993, she opened a school in Turin where more than 600 students learned it. Bandera also made a début in fashion. Consolata Pralormo created waistcoats on which were embroidered small bunches of flowers that seemed to come out of the pockets, as well as shopping bags and elegant clutch bags all in a flourish of small fruits and birds.