Como, city of silk

The tradition of silk in the Larian territory goes back as far as 1400. In  the year a large number of mulberry plants were placed by order of Ludovico Sforza, and continued uninterrupted until the 1970s, when the production of silk in the Como had even surpassed the production in China and in Japan.

The first silk prints were made for large quantities of engravings and industrial problems. The first solutions to print on silk was too approximative and too difficult to get the industrialization.

The photo-gravure began to spread; the wooden pad was replaced with the modern painting. Still today in the flat printing thanks to the very high quality of execution and the opportunity to repeat the drawing several times.

The research to get much more industrialization of the process led to the birth of the cylinders, applying a new concept of rotary machines. these allowed much more productions than other methods.

However, The costs are high and difficult to amortize with the volumes; in the last 10 years, also for this reason, they are used less.

Furthermore, the stylistic research has been oriented towards the designs that are combined with traditional printing systems.

Therefore, ink jet printing became the perfect way to get various designs on the fabric, in less time, and even with lower prices. After these first simple plotter for ink jet, the digital developed more and more, becoming more competitive than rotative machine. From those first simple plotters, development has always been easier to use and turn, with increasingly competitive costs.