The history of Punto Assisi
Assisi, city of Peace and Prayer , can also be called the city of work. Following the example of Chiara degli Scifi, Sainte Claire of Assisi. Many women came there to found peace on the shadow of contemplative cloisters, sharing the day between work and prayer. About all the convents keep in their sacristies treasures of sacred linens and table clothes , looking to their they seem made by the hands of faiths. In the quiet cloistered laboratories, the gentle Franciscan legend is always a large source of inspiration. The tapestries, panels and the table clothes used the divine cult, are reproducing in their boards the delicate ornaments inspired of the scene painted in the frescoes of Giotto and Simone Martini. According to the change of time the problem of life is becoming more obsessing, the women assume a major role and also more difficult, taking an important part in the hard fight for life, with an artistic work. This work passed from the silent cloisters to the simple homes and so gave to young women independence and work. Every city tried to get from his past a particular work, even Assisi joined the others cities in order to find the style more adapted to its soul. Nobel women rummaged in the chest in the ancient patrician houses , in the cloisters in the sacristies of the major churches and in the oratories, closed in the green of the fertile coast, they reproduced with meticulous accuracy the primitive drawings of the 13 th and 14th centuries, even in the coarse ingenuousness of the line, others from the 15th and 16th centuries always more elegant and perfect. The divine frescoes , the portals the linear choir finely carved. With its faded ivory pallor, the rolls of cloth had to imitate old canvas, the embroidery has to be so close as possible to the traditional colours, rust brown and and blue, the drawing do not lost its rectilinear character. The genial experience can not have a more happy end, the embroidery linen with “Punto assisi” made with care in all details, soon got out the urban walls and join others cities in Italy and also brought in foreign countries even over the ocean the beauty of an ancient art and history conjugated in a female way, grateful for the delicate blue roses embroidered by Jacopa de’ Settesoli, piously close with the saint of Assisi, the poorest Saint, the holiest poor. During the 19th and the 20th centuries the art of embroidery called Punto Assisi became more elegant, many different technical centres, as “Il laboratorio S. Francesco, the Cooperative C.A.R.A., the centre of embroidery is there that after the two world wars, many young women learn this art. Today lessons of embroidery of Punto Assisi and lessons of embroidery Madama Caterina are made by the Academy Punto Assisi with the intent to offer to the young and less young people the possibilities to learn an excellent art which is disappearing, (also supplanted by the machine), the opportunities of a change, experiences, dialogue, collaboration socialization and a point meeting under the sign of an elegant womanly art.
Execution of the Punto Assisi

The embroidery of Punto Assisi is executed on a roll of cloth in natural linen or ecru with warp with the same thickness (Franciscan or Assisi roll of cloth).
The Punto of Assisi is considerate of medium difficulty and it has to be executed in two times :
- 1. Profile of the drawing
- 2. Filling the back ground
Also the contour has to be done in two times, both in running stitch taking three thread and living the following three.
At the end of this first operation of the contour , you have to come back and repeat this operation reversing the work, filling the white spaces in order to create a continuous line. It is very important that the back of the work is the same as the straight.
The different parts of the drawing in the sense of the width so that in the sense of the length has to keep the distance of three thread each one, so for the perfect regularity of the execution of the cross stitch on the back ground.
When the contour is finished with linear stitch, it has to remain in white, you can proceed with the execution of the cross stitch on the back ground, making first half stitch and coming back.
Some drawing has some stitch which do not for a regular square of three tread per three of the roll of cloth, but a diagonal, to execute this stitch you have to put the needle in the half of the same diagonal stitch, having care to avoid any blank in the contour , which so will be less sharp.
The wok has to be well-finished usually with a square stitch and an rolled border, that is to say a small cord , executed not folding up but rolling it between the thumb and the index finger as you keep on working.
Il punto assisi can be executed on a roll of cloth with thread not very thin but so equal as possible in the warping and in the weave, regular without fault.
The more adapted cotton for this embroidery is D.M.C. with the numbers 18 from the more thick to the more fine, according to the roll of cloth.
For the colours the choice is between dark red, fiery red with black contour or in the same colour. Brown and russet, dark blue, medium and clear.
These are the traditional colours from which is very difficult to change it , when you want to follow the tradition of our embroiderers.
We want to put your attention on the fact that this embroidery has to be hand-made, in order to avoid the “contamination” by the mechanical work, which are never considered by the connoisseur of this elegant and precious womanly art called Punto Assisi.