Highly Strung

Experimental artisans Impagliando weave a way from furniture to fashion.

- R​osa Bertoli

When Eugenio Taddei and Marta Spinelli met in 2005, both were working on the craftier side of the Italian furniture industry – Taddei was a varnisher, while Spinelli was in weaving, the third generation of her family to dedicate themselves to the skill. Spinelli had studied law and worked as an accountant in Milan. But she decided office life was not for her and returned to the family operation, which offered its services to furniture makers in the Brianza area, an hour north of Italy’s design capital. Spinelli and Taddei smartly founded Impagliando, an artisanal workshop focused on exploring the full possibilities of weaving.

The pair’s backgrounds and passions are rooted in what the Italians call ‘il mobile’ – furniture to the rest of us. But that translation doesn’t have the particular weight that the phrase carries in Italian: the association with strong manufacturing traditions; the growth of small, family-run artisanal workshops in Brianza into a fully fledged industry that is one of the country’s proudest achievements.

Spinelli and Taddei wanted Impagliando, which translates simply as ‘weaving’, to be part of that heritage. They started out doing the basics: restoring vintage woven chairs, learning traditional weaving methods and working with local materials such as straw and raffia. After finessing the classic techniques, they started experimenting with new materials, such as technical rope, PVC and leather rods, and designing their own woven textures.