A return to the origins: the Armungia rugs

Casa Lussu’s textile products are not simply craftworks but the result of a project mixing contemporary and traditional.

Armungia
In 2008, Tommaso Lussu’s move from Rome, the place of his birth in 1973, to Armungia, a small village with a population of approximately 490 in the province of Cagliari, produced two results.
It marked a return to the origins of his family in Sardinia but also the rediscovery of an age-old art – hand weaving – as a trade for life. This is not, however, only the story of the search for an occupation. Lussu interprets the textile craft as a reappraisal and protection of Sardinia’s cultural heritage and see traditional technologies as the means to introduce innovation into his work. “We do not hand-weave because we are fundamentalist”, claims Lussu, “but because we believe that innovation lies within tradition.”
armungia
The hand-weaving textile workshop Casa Lussu is in Armungia, a small village situated 365 asl in south-eastern Sardinia
Drawing inspiration from the thoughts of Richard Sennet, author of The Craftsman (Allen Lane/Penguin Press, 2008), Lussu uses his hand-weaving workshop to repair the fractures that, over time, have separated “the practice from the theory, the technique from the expression, the craftsman from the artist”, reducing to a minimum the distance between mind and hands and restoring the combined existence of designer and craftsman.
Armungia
The artisans of Casa Lussu have adopted the technique of heddle weaving to compose abstract geometric designs
The project commenced in 2008 when, after graduating in palaeontology from the La Sapienza University in Rome, and working on European research projects for some years, Lussu returned to Sardinia to restore a nuraghe. He now lives in the stone house that belonged to his grandfather, Emilio Lussu (politician and writer, known for having written Un anno sull’altopiano in 1937 and founded the Partito Sardo d’Azione in 1919). In one of its rooms, he found an old horizontal peddle loom in holly wood. He decided to restore it.
Armungia
Tommaso Lussu and Barbara Cardia source the woods to dye their yarns from nature: elder, walnut, pomegranate, ivy and lentiscus
Weaving was not a trade in its own right in Sardinia but was present in every home for the production of everyday objects (blankets, sheets, towels, tablecloths). At the same time, it was a way to supplement an income based on farming. With the help of Barbara Cardia and an elderly aunt, Giovanna Serri, Tommaso Lussu started using the loom and learnt the technique of heddle weaving (a litzos).
Armungia
The loom used by Lussu and Cardia is made of holly wood. The two artisans were taught by an elderly aunt, Giovanna Serri
This technique employs heddles, vertical cotton cords, tied to reeds and laid horizontally. The heddles separate the warp yarns in pre-established sequences. They give rise to abstract geometric compositions that may be monochrome or in several colours. The wool and cotton fibres are dyed by the artisans themselves, using natural woods such as elder, walnut, pomegranate, ivy and lentiscus.
Armungia
The Casa Lussu workshop in the family home in Armungia, Cagliari

Although the heddle technique has remained unchanged for centuries, the geometric design and combination of colours and materials revisit the past with a more contemporary influence and innovatory vision than normally seen in Sardinian handicrafts. The work of the craftspeople of Casa Lussu is not limited to the creation of textile products but extends to other disciplines: Lussu and Cardia organise creative workshops with graphic artists and, at the same time, work with the Faculty of Architecture in Alghero and that of Anthropology in Cagliari. They have restored more looms, including one from the 19th century, and constructed a network of artisans they collaborate with. A spark of innovation is now shining out among the houses of an old Sardinian village.

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