Touring in Piemonte, part 2

Aug 26

The last day touring around Biella continued with a visit to an historic villa in the village of Pollone where we met a young member of the Piacenza family, who owns a prestigious textile factory specializing in cashmere clothing and other textiles. We were then taken to their outlet store, where several of our group purchased some lovely items.

Passionflower— so exquisite!

Window inside the villa.

Arianna in the lavish entry hall.

A Venetian glass chandelier in the dining room.

The family's and their company's emblem is the thistle.

Coffered ceiling, and every inch is covered with decoration.

That's some fireplace!

Family members enjoy gardening and have this huge conservatory in the garden.

A family member a couple generations back was an artist.

This studio was nicely preserved.

Very cool triangles.

The most unusual paint palette I've ever seen.

Walking in the streets of Pollone.

At the Piacenza Cashmere factory outlet.

Look closely to see the rows of thistles. They card the cashmere fibers as they pass through.

Detail of the vintage machinery.

Display of the steps in refining the fiber.

Riceto di Candelo and an Agriturismo dinner

Next stop was to walk around a Medieval stronghold, a preserved set of warehouses that were built to store and protect the crop harvest back in old times. Now they are used as restaurants, studios and shops of various sorts. Most everything was closed on this day, so it was eerily deserted. Nice views of the valley below from a rampart. We ended our day at a lovely country agriturismo that had a large restaurant and shop offering local products. We enjoyed a tasty dinner outside, under a massive star jasmine arbor.

Not sure what the banners mean.

Plenty of cool details like this to take close-ups of.

A restaurant that was closed that day.

Each of these buildings held many warehouses for harvests back in the middle ages.

Nice view of the valley.

Our group assembling under the arbor for dinner at the agriturismo.

Day 8, In the Country around Biella

This was our final workshop day. We cleaned everything up in the morning, received our completion certificates and took group photos. Then we boarded our mini bus and headed out to a goat farm!

The goats were darling!

Stefanie in petting one of them in her cool new hat.

Muriel with so many baby goats.

The son of the owners on the donkey. That kid was running and climbing all over the place!

Viewing the cheesemaking process.

Our host serving us fresh cheeses made mere steps away.

Their home, restaurant, farm and production facility.

Ingrid and our driver Marco having fun at lunch.

Happy group!

View towards Biella.

Cittadellarte

After lunch we went into Biella to visit a former textile factory turned into an institute for creative experimentation, and retrospective museum of art by an influential Italian artist, Michaelangelo Pistoletto, who we hadn’t heard of before, but learned he was well-known and prolific in Italy and beyond. And, he’s still alive at 90! AND, we got to meet him!