Livorno Rag women
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Livorno Rag women
Eugenio Cecconi, 1880. Oil painting on canvas, 88 x 170 cm
The rag women or “cenciaie” are resting opposite the Fortezza Nuova on the Bishop's Palace steps, supported by the parapet of the Fosso Reale. They have probably just delivered rags and thrown-out clothes collected from rubbish on the street and items discarded by wealthy homes; or they have just come out of the workshops where they spent a large part of their lives working rags to send to the paper mills. They all have various styles of scarves or cloths on their heads, which were useful in the workshops to protect themselves from the unhealthy dust. Some, in the centre, are sleeping, exhausted, holding the warmer to warm themselves up. Others in the background are tiredly chatting. Only the girl standing up in the foreground does not appear to be tired, or give up on the low-paid hard work. Once collected, the rags were worked at home or in the workshop. After being hurriedly cleaned, known as a shake, with any buckles and buttons removed, and seams ripped, they were then divided into wool, cloth, coloured rags and woollen; the rags were then cut into small pieces and collected in large bales. The rags were sold to paper mills and turned into a wet mixture that was pressed and dried and became sheets of paper.
In 1887, about 700 women, mostly young girls, worked in the rag sector in Livorno, often temporarily and at home. It was the third sector of work in the city, after the shipyards and the mechanical workshops, and was almost the only work for women. Humble, unhealthy and badly paid work: in 1884, the Livorno rag women took part in protests and strikes.
Livorno was a large centre for the international rag market: in 1887, approximately 6,000 bales, each weighing 3 hundred kilos, per year were shipped, mostly to the United States. At the start of the 20th century, it became the largest centre in Italy for this type of trade. The progressive mechanisation of the rag process and the change to wooden cellulose, then to a chemical paste for making paper, led to the end of the collection and manual processing of rags, from the mid-20th century.
[Taken from Work path, by Sara Bruni, in the Fattori Civic Museum in Livorno: works, paths, links. Guide to the educational project by Antonella Gioli, Sillabe s.r.l. Livorno, 2016]