THE EXCELLENCIES OF FLORENCE
The excellencies of Florence are unique places that had an important role in the the history of Made in Italy all over the world, but may be you don’t know that are original Made in Florence!
Officina Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella- Be fascinated by the frescoes, old furniture, tools and unique products in one of the oldest and most famous chemists in the world with more than seven centuries of history behind it! It’s partially a shop and partially a museum, in any case it’s a place that will surprise you and you’ll remember this visit/experience for a long time. Here the monks created the first perfume of history that Caterina de’ Medici, who married Henry II of France, introduced to the French court.
Museo della Scarpa “Salvatore Ferragamo” – A particularly interesting visit is that to the shoe museum of Salvatore Ferragamo, the Italian fashion designer known throughout the world, that had the honour and the burden to “make shoes” to the most famous women of his age. Gloria Swanson and Claudette Colbert chose classical shoes; Marlene Dietrich only wanted the latest fashion, that she wore just twice. Ferragamo understood perfectly the influence of the shoe on the female psiche. From the beginning of his career he realised that the choice of a shoe amounted to offering his clientele infinite possibilities in a selection of models for every occasion and for every mood. The footwear collection (a selection of more than 14.000 archivied models) documents the entire span of Salvatore Ferragamo’s career, from his return to Italy in 1927 to 1960 the year he died. The collection is also enriched by footwear production after the death of Salvatore Ferragamo, down to present day.
Antico Setificio Fiorentino – In the old craftsmen’s area of San Frediano, there is a place where it seams to enter in an enchanted world, a place where the silence is broken by the “noise” of the ancient looms only. Untouched by time, the factory and the showroom, full of atmosphere, are located in a historic garden, behind an eighteen century gate in Via Bartolini N.4.
Master weavers, work in this Florentine “Bottega” where they weave traditional Florentine fabrics, brokatels and damasks on twelve looms: six handlooms dating from the eighteen century and six semi-mechanical looms from the nineteenth century. In the middle of the fifties, “Antico Setificio Fiorentino” has flourished thanks to the acquisition by Marquis and stylist Emilio Pucci and the other founding families of the majority shareholding, a takeover which enabled the company to manufacture textiles to furnish stately homes of Italian and international nobility.
If you belive that light “is a magic and powerful phenomenon that should not be interpreted just as technology and function”, you cannot miss the famous collection of contemporary artworks which use artificial light as expressive tool and primary content at the “Targetti Light Art Collection Museum“. Created by Paolo Targetti and curated by Amnon Barzel, founder and former director of the Pecci Museum in Prato and the Judisches Museum in Berlin, the Targetti Light Art Collection it is the result of a fruitful synergy between the worlds of scientific research and artistic creativity. The collection is composed by 30 light works, luminous wall mounted installations realized using artificial light. The artists invited to participate in the project work in close cooperation with the Company’s technicians in order to transform fluorescent lamps, fiber optics, LEDs, Wood, halogen and dichroic lamps, plasma screens, neon tubes and color-changing devices into fascinating emotional media. Realized exclusively on commission, all the light works have the same dimensions (120 x 120 cm). This requirement hasn’t been interpreted by the artists as a limit imposed on their expressive freedom but as a challenge: the extraordinary diversity of their works shows their ability to overcome the uniformity of the ‘light square’ they have been invited to work on.
