A 19th century mezzaro dell'albero vecchio

Circa 1840-1850. Probably Genoese.

The cotton ground block printed with a tree of life design, the branches heavy with exotic flowers above rising hillocks, and with a variety of animals and birds.

The term mezzaro possibly derives from the Arabic ‘mi’zar’, meaning to cover, and references in 16th century Genoese inventories to a ‘mezaro turchino’ and to ‘meizari due Indiane’ indicate their origin via the thriving oriental commerce of the port. Production of mezzari of the present type had commenced in Genoa by the late 18th century and thrived in the first half of the following century. Although they must have served a variety of purposes, contemporary images show women wearing them as shawls, often attached at the crown of their heads with a silver clasp (a method which had the effect that, in many cases, the cotton is weak or damaged at the centre). They were made to set designs, the majority inspired by Indian palampores and giving prominence to a central flowering tree. The name of each type of mezzaro is taken from a distinguishing feature of the design and, as is the case with several others, the name for this variation, the ‘mezzaro of the old tree’, is known from titled drawings deposited in the Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe di Palazzo Rosso in Genoa by Eduardo Testori, a descendant of one of the 19th century makers of these textiles. Margharita Belleza Rosina and Marzia Cataldi Gallo, in ‘Cotoni Stampati e Mezzari’, publ. Sagep Editrice, Genova, 1997, write that this arrangement - also known as the ‘mezzaro dell’amore’ because many of the animals at the foot of the tree are in pairs - is the most closely related to the palampores of the preceding century. They cite and illustrate (fig. 12, p. 19) a palampore in the A.E.D.T.A Collection, Paris, to which the layout of the present mezzaro adheres extremely closely; to the extent that even the positioning of butterflies is replicated.

The design was printed throughout the 19th century by all of the main Genoese workshops - those of Michele Speich, the Fratelli Speich, (both in the Cornigliano district of the city) and of Luigi Testori (in Sampierdariena); Rosina & Gallo write that the border used here - a small bird and a butterfly above an urn of flowers and a pile of fruit - is found on many mezzari produced by Testori.

The Speich family had come to Genoa from Switzerland, and some theories hold that this design also originated there (though still having been inspired by palampores) and was imported from Neuchatel. The firm of Bovet et Cie, set up in the first half of the 18th century in that town, is documented in the second decade of the 19th century as producing cloth similar to mezzari, one of which was called ‘l’ancien tronc’, and which may well have been of the same arrangement.

Rosina & Gallo (op. cit.) illustrate several mezzari dell’albero vecchio in a chapter devoted to the design, and an unfinished example in the collection of the V & A, acc. no. CIRC.68-1928, is very similar to this, with the same border details, while another, acc. no. 490-1884, has the design reversed.

237cm (93¼”) high and 180cm (70⅞”) wide.