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Thank you to the Biella Masters Programme and to all the amazing mills where these photos were taken. Your work is truly inspiring. Special thanks to Merino New Zealand Incorporated, The New Zealand Merino Company, and Meat & Wool New Zealand. To Simon, Richard, Nick, and all the great people we met on our travels - Grazie.
All photographs in this series were taken by Blythe Rees-Jones on a Canon EOS 450D. Copyright 2009
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View from Mt Camino, Italy.
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There is a very strong connection between Italian fashion and our magic white merino fibre from the depths of the south island of New Zealand. It all begins in a small remote place called Biella, situated in northern Italy in the foothills of the Italian alps. Biella is an integral part of the international high end luxury fibres industry and the region has a long standing tradition of producing fine, high quality woollen and worsted textiles. Every year a high percentage of superfine New Zealand merino is purchased by Italian mills in Biella where it is crafted into a range of highly valuable luxury fibre products. New Zealand merino is highly regarded in Italy for its premium qualities: low micron, good crimp and elongation, optimum staple length, whiteness, and low vegetable matter. This book provides an insight into how New Zealand merino is processed in Biella.
Photographs were taken while visiting a series of Biellese mills as part of the Biella Master of Noble Fibres Scholarship sponsored by Meat & Wool New Zealand and Merino Inc, and organized by Merino Inc and The New Zealand Merino Company. The Biella Masters program is an Italian textiles initiative set up to bring factories and artists together to foster the handing down of knowledge, skills and entrepreneurial ability for the prosperity of both New Zealand merino and the Italian textiles industry. It is hoped that these images capture your imagination as much as they did the photographer. The images are presented to give you a real impression of what goes into making exclusive luxury fibre products in Italy from our renewable white resource known as New Zealand merino.
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