What happens when you mix age-old traditions with the passion of modern entrepreneurs? Join us as we uncover the inspiring story of Miriam Pugliese, co-owner of Nido di Seta, who left the bustle of Milan to breathe new life into Calabria’s ancient silk industry. Miriam, along with her partners Domenico and Giovanna, transformed a forgotten silk museum and mulberry orchard in San Floro into a thriving hub of traditional silk production, blending historical techniques with sustainable practices. Their mission is to show the world that Calabria is a land brimming with potential and opportunities.
From the legacy of Domenico and Giovanna’s grandparents to the contemporary global fashion market, we explore the journey of bringing a centuries-old craft back to prominence. Discover the intricate process of silk production, from the life cycle of silkworms to weaving on ancient looms, and learn how you can experience this firsthand at their museum. This episode is a treasure trove of personal stories, regional beauty, and the untold history of Calabria’s once-thriving silk industry. Don’t miss the chance to support and engage with this remarkable revival by exploring Nido di Seta’s exquisite silk products.
Turnkey. The only thing you’ll lift are your spirits.
What happens when you mix age-old traditions with the passion of modern entrepreneurs? Join us as we uncover the inspiring story of Miriam Pugliese, co-owner of Nido di Seta, who left the bustle of Milan to breathe new life into Calabria’s ancient silk industry. Miriam, along with her partners Domenico and Giovanna, transformed a forgotten silk museum and mulberry orchard in San Floro into a thriving hub of traditional silk production, blending historical techniques with sustainable practices. Their mission is to show the world that Calabria is a land brimming with potential and opportunities.
From the legacy of Domenico and Giovanna’s grandparents to the contemporary global fashion market, we explore the journey of bringing a centuries-old craft back to prominence. Discover the intricate process of silk production, from the life cycle of silkworms to weaving on ancient looms, and learn how you can experience this firsthand at their museum. This episode is a treasure trove of personal stories, regional beauty, and the untold history of Calabria’s once-thriving silk industry. Don’t miss the chance to support and engage with this remarkable revival by exploring Nido di Seta’s exquisite silk products.
Turnkey. The only thing you’ll lift are your spirits.
Purchase my book "Farmers and Nobles" here or at Amazon.
Speaker 1:
Hi everyone, this is Bob Sorrentino, from Italian Roots and Genealogy. Be sure to check out our blog and our YouTube channel and our newsletter and our great sponsors, your Dolce Vita Italy, Rooting Phil Italy and Abiettivo Casa. And today I have a special guest all the way from Calabria, Miriam Pugliese, who is one of the owners of Nido di Setta. So welcome, Miriam. Thank you for being here.
Speaker 2:
Thank you. Hello everybody, welcome Miriam. Thank you for being here.
Speaker 1:
Thank you, Hello everybody. You know I love talking to people from Italy. It makes this special for me, that's for sure. Yeah, and especially young people from Italy is even better. Oh, yes, so you know, let's do a little bit about your background. Where?
Speaker 2:
is your family from, originally in Italy, so I was born in Calabria. So Calabria is the boot, is exactly the boot, before Sicily, to give you an idea. But my parents moved to Milan when I was less than one year old, so I grew up totally nearby Milan and I came back in Calabria that is more or less one hour 30 minutes with the plane for holidays and I really absolutely loved with the plane for holidays and I really absolutely loved the genuine and the landscape, the food, the people, the authenticity of the place. Really, for me, it was, like you know, be wild and free, being Calabria and I'm specializing for languages, and I worked always in international field also airport I was. I was also a fire attendant for Lufthansa and I was really lucky to travel and and also to live in a different part of Europe.
Speaker 2:
And I lived for a while in Berlin and this experience gave me the occasion to see my homeland with really different eyes. You know, some really we can say silly things appears to me really incredible. You know, in Berlin in 2012, everybody was doing guerrilla gardening, so they were planting tomatoes and other stuff in a really old style refrigerator or using the net of the matrix like doors and so on, and I was growing up with my grandfather doing like this. So, in one of the most important capital of Europe, going back was the way to build the future, but my grandparents always did that, so you know I have another way to look at them.
Speaker 2:
So, and also was really impressive to me the beauty. You know, we have different conception of beauty and their conception of beauty was really different from mine. When they say, oh, this place is beautiful, my level of beautiful is little different. So, okay, if you will come in our place, what you will do, this is beautiful, you know, and thanks to this experience, I made a flight Berlin, calabria and now I'm 11 years. Then I live here that's fantastic.
Speaker 1:
So, you know, I always ask, I always ask the Italian Americans what was it like going home? So now, since you didn't grow up in Calabria, when, when you, when you, when you went back, you had, I'm guessing you felt like you never left. Is that right?
Speaker 2:
yeah, but you know, we um, uh, we always um. When we grow up, when people of Calabria grow up, everybody's telling you here there is nothing, here there is nothing, here there is nothing, here there is nothing. It's like you know without stop and you grow up thinking that here there is nothing, but it's not absolutely like this. So, for this reason is really um important to have another perspective. In this way, we can, you know, remove the sopressata that we have in front of our eyes and see things completely in another way, because I think that this land is really rich, it's virgin and there are really a lot of point of view. There is really a lot to do. But anyway, if it was correct that here there was nothing, that means that there is everything to do.
Speaker 1:
That's my point of view yeah, and that's fantastic, and I think it's, I think it's just so great that you know you wanted to to revive an industry that goes back centuries and centuries and centuries. So how did you come about? You know, starting a business with some friends.
Speaker 2:
You know when I came back here. So, berlin, Calabria. I am from a little village the name is San Floro. We are in the middle of Calabria. I am from a little village, the name is San Floro. We are in the middle of Calabria, so in the middle of the boot. It's the narrowest point of Italy, less than 30 kilometers that. I have no idea how many miles are. I'm sorry for that, but it's really less than 20 minutes by car from one coast to the other, minutes by car from one coast to the other. So this little village has more or less 500 people, including wild boars and cats, and we were there, me and Domenico and Giovanna, in the same time of life where all of us want to stay in this little village.
Speaker 2:
But doing what? So we start like a research what can this territory give us, you know? And in San Floro there was an abandoned mulberry orchard with more than 3,000 plants and an abandoned silk museum that was inside a castle. So the property of both was the municipality of San Floro, and we understand, we studied what's going on, why there was a mulberry orchard and abandoned silk museum, and the things are that calabria was the really uh, the most bigger producer of raw silk of europe between the 50th and the 17th century. So the 50 of the production of Europe between that period was made in Calabria and if some of you have an idea of how Calabria is, you can see nowadays you can see olive trees everywhere.
Speaker 2:
You have to imagine that in that time, between the 50th and the 70th century, there were mulberry trees everywhere, like today there are olive trees. That's why because there was a really big production of silk through the silkworm breeding, because silkworm eat just mulberry leaves. Silkworm it's just mulberry leaves, and to make silk, the most precious yarn and fabric of the world, we need to have trees, mulberry trees. So we found also papers of our in our um government archive. In San Floro in the 60th century was bred 1,600 kilos of silk cocoons. I don't know if any of you had a silk cocoon in the end Probably. I have here one just to give you an idea. But a silk cocoon is extremely light. This is a silk cocoon.
Speaker 2:
I don't know if you can see.
Speaker 1:
Yes, yeah, we see perfectly yeah.
Speaker 2:
Okay. So imagine 1,600 kilos of these. You know it's really a huge thing for a small village like our village. So we said, okay, let's start from our past to build our future. So we asked our municipality the permission to manage the land Silk Museum and now are 10 years that silk is our way to live, but also to rebuild the economy of this territory.
Speaker 1:
That's just fantastic. And I mean you know such foresight to textile industry or agriculture fields, you know um I was specialized completely in other kind of things also.
Speaker 2:
Giovanna and Domenico the same. Just Domenico, uh, has some knowledge because when he was a little like, he used to breed silkworm with his grandfather. Because until the generation of our grandparents all the people used to breed silkworms to self-production. Because they breed their silkworms to make their own silk, to make their own tablecloth curtains or napkins and so on tablecloth curtains or napkins and so on. So this tradition was going to disappear completely with the generation of our nearby villages.
Speaker 2:
To have the knowledge to read to, to learn everything about this tradition before it was too late our teacher were more or less 89, 92 years old to give you an idea, and this was absolutely the first step for us. They give you knowledges, but these knowledges weren't enough to build a company. It was okay for, like a hobby, to give you an idea. So what we did was to backpack and travel all around the world to understand what silk is nowadays the market, the realities, the production and this was really useful for us to know really good our roots, but also to combine with the international communities and the global market. And this was the story to how nowadays, we are able to make silk for the traditional production. So we do really traditional textile, traditional fabrics, but also we innovate this process and we make silk that is suitable for the eye fashion. So the tradition of our grandparents, for our ancestors, go on the red carpets and that was really and this is really emotional for all of us.
Speaker 1:
That's just, I mean, and that's why I wanted to talk to you. As soon as I saw your other interview, I was like I have to talk to her, I have to get her on, for a couple of reasons. One is I think it's just so noble and great to revive something in Italy that happened for hundreds and hundreds of years, that fell apart in modern, and to make a vibrant business out of it. You know, to, to, to make a vibrant business out of it, I'll tell you. The other reason I'm interested in it is this is Palazzo Pio Marlo in Fasato, and it's the home of my third great grandfather, or one of his homes. He had many, but what I learned while we were there was they had a silk industry in the Palazzo. So you know, like, besides having the Calabrian link, also to have that link to the silk industry was just fantastic to me, you know.
Speaker 2:
Yes, absolutely, absolutely yes, absolutely.
Speaker 1:
Absolutely, and this you know, the town or the Borgi. They wanted to purchase this. It's owned, it's not in the family anymore, unfortunately. I wish it was. They tried to purchase it and the owner won't sell and it's. We got to go inside and it was really bittersweet because you could see what it once was. Um, but it's, you know, the, the insides really, you know, were deteriorating rapidly now, um, the other thing I learned when I was on your site that the museum is in one of the Caracciolo castles, correct?
Speaker 2:
Yes, it's a Caracciolo castle. Yes, it was a summer residence of the Caracciolo family.
Speaker 1:
Well, I'm Caracciolo too. My grandmother was Pirmalo from the Count of Montebello, and my great-grandmother was Caracciolo di Torchi Rolo from the Princes of Torchi Rolo and the Princes of Avelino. So when I saw the. Caracciolo Castle, I was like, oh my goodness, it's one of our homes.
Speaker 2:
Yes, exactly, it's an incredible connection.
Speaker 1:
Wow, wow, homes. Yes, exactly, it's incredible connection. Wow um wow. But you know, we, we really love calabria. We, you know we went to we don't go to too many places, but we went to shila, which was just absolutely beautiful yes, it is my favorite place in calabria, my wife's favorite place, I think, in the world, but it is just and, like you said, the landscape, the scenery and everything is just like.
Speaker 1:
You know, no place we've we've ever seen, um, but you know, today, you know, montebello and fasato, uh, probably similar to to your town, you know, maybe a thousand residents or something like that. Uh, and everything homegrown and homemade. It was just so great. One of the other things I learned looking at your website was that you still you don't use manmade dyes, right, you use traditional dyes and everything.
Speaker 2:
Yes, that's really important for us, and everything when you yes, that's really important for us because, uh, when we travel all around the world to have no knowledge, uh, about the world of silk, we saw wonderful things but also awful, awful things. And one of the awful but of all the fabric and yours it's really incredible. It's 100% pollution. It's something that you can really clean away. You know, you are creating a permanent pollution on the planet when you do these processes, and we were in india and all these people were, um, dying, all these uh silk skeins, uh, without any kind of protection for themselves. We were able to stay there five minutes because we have like kind of red eyes and difficulties to breathe, and they were there like 18 hours a day just with the fabric around.
Speaker 1:
You know the apron like an apron yeah excelling, nothing else.
Speaker 2:
So, um, but this is wasn't the awful things. The really bad thing was that that that real, really wonderful water they were like blue, green, yellow, were that. These are full of heavy metals. Uh, were used to, you know, irrigate the nearby fields and we saw their tobaccos, ginger and tea, to give you an idea. So for us, it was like we were really under shock when we saw all these processes and we said when we came back that we will never, ever, do something like this, never use chemicals to die. So we did other researches and, uh, one book we found. We found one book that was really, really useful for us.
Speaker 2:
Um, it was a research of some, uh, scientists of the Kingdom of the Two Sicily, when Italy wasn't. Italy was a lot of kingdoms. So we are in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and these researchers found 742 naturally dying plants. And what means dying plants? Dying plants means that these plants give the pigment to you and this pigment is resistant to water, to scrubbing and to the sun. That means dying plants. So a strawberry, for example, is not a dying plant, but these researchers found 70, sorry, 742 dying plants that surround us in this territory. So start a really, you know, powerful research to find these plants all around us and still nowadays we die just with natural colors that's, that's amazing, that's really, that's really something.
Speaker 1:
And so, besides helping the planet and and being safe for you guys, uh, it, it actually is is more permanent than I guess, than than the, then I guess, then the man-made dies, the chemical dies, yeah.
Speaker 2:
But you know, until 1868, all the world used to dye with natural colors because the chemical dyes didn't exist. So it's less than 200 years, 150 years, that we dye with chemical colors, but for thousands and thousands and thousands of years we just dye with natural color. And in the Vatican, in all the museums all over the world, we have pieces of fabrics from Romans, from Greeks, from Maya, and they have colors on top from maya. And there are, they have colors on top. So, yes, absolutely uh, the natural color lasts on the fiber. The only thing is that all the colors, the most um, you know, uh, dangerous things for the color is the sun. Also, if you hang a chemical dyed t-shirt on the sun, after two, three days a black is not black anymore, it's like gray, and the same for the other colors. So of course, it's better to have a better care of our dress, clothes, garments, of course, but the results are incredible.
Speaker 1:
So is purple still the most expensive to dye.
Speaker 2:
Yes, of course it's more expensive. Just to give you an idea. Just to give you an idea. Each natural color has his own way to extract the pigment. There is no one way for everybody. So every plant has his own way to extract the pigment and from each pigment we can achieve 25 different shades of colors and, um is really uh amazing, also the time that you need to achieve that color. So there are some colors that come up after five minutes are the colors that employs 12 hours, you know? So it's a kind of a science. It's a science and absolutely can't be the same of open, uh plastic things with some powder and and dye is absolutely different.
Speaker 2:
so, yes, of of course, natural dye is more expensive compared to the chemical dye, but I think that our way to see the world, what we dress, what we eat, has to change to protect everybody on the planet who dress and who works for dress um, yeah, that's, that's really so interesting and I had no idea.
Speaker 1:
And, uh, so you know, start to finish from when the silkworm. Well, how long does it does it take to silkworm to create a cocoon? But what's the timeline from when you get the cocoon to processing, uh, the, the fabric, and dying it, until actually, you know, putting the, uh, the finished product out there? How long does that take?
Speaker 2:
oh okay, so step by step. So, um, the silkworm life cycle for the breeding. For the breeding is more or less 30 days, from eggs etches until the silkworm weaving the silk cocoon all around him. So after that we have to wait kind of five, six days and we are able to collect all the cocoons. It depends of which kind of silk we have to do.
Speaker 2:
We have different processes To do the conventional silk, so the silk that everybody knows in the world. We need to dry the cocoons and then there is the reeling process. So from the cocoon we pull out the thread Just here I have some cocoons, but to remove the thread from the cocoon we need hot water. But here you, you have an idea of how could work the process. And then after we reel the silk so from the cocoon we reel the silk we do skein skein of raw silk. This skein need to be twist and after need to be de-gummed, because because the silk cocoon is exactly a spool of thread created by the silkworm. So the silkworm spin one unique thread all around him that has glue and glue it all together. So the silk cocoon is a glued spool of thread. When we reel the silk, this glue is on the fiber. So it makes the fiber like a little shag, a little rough. So to have the silk that everybody knows, we need to do the degumming process. So after doing the degum, there is another twisting and then there is the dyeing and then there is the weaving, the weaving of the fabric. So it's kind of a long process but it's incredibly amazing.
Speaker 2:
Nowadays there are eight artisans. They are all women and they work from their laboratories that are spread all over Calabria and each one is specialized in one stage of production of silk. So it's like you know, here in Italy we have Como, we have Prato, there are industrial textile districts where every company is specialized in one step of the process. We are more or less the same, but instead of companies we have artisans, we have a human being, that each one is specialized in one step of the process, that each one is specialized on one step of the process. And this makes me happy.
Speaker 2:
I'm really happy for this because, you know, unfortunately in Calabria we have the worst unemployment rate for women of all Europe and this little network is like a tears in the ocean. But this woman have an income and this income they invest in their small villages. And this thing little little things but helps the people to stay in the places you know. They don't need to go away to find other work, they can still do their job. That is something that is going to disappear. They create income and they invest in their territory, and this is our idea of development of this region. I think that we need something like this because we are really authentic, we are back in time, but I think that now this is a really good thing for us. But we have to know that this is a good thing for us and how to manage this to increase the wellness of the people and the economy of the territory.
Speaker 1:
Oh yeah, I love it, I really love it. And nothing goes to waste, right, you use the mulberry fruit and you use the cocoons, and there's all kinds of products that come out of this. Yeah yeah, you use the mulberry fruit and you use the cocoons. There's all kinds of products that come out of this, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:
So I have to tell you that we are the last company in Europe who makes just sericulture, because there are other companies but they do also, for example, wine or wheat or other things. We do just sericulture and mulberry tree cultivation. But to live of this we have to be multifunctional. So for this reason, for us it's really important to don't have any kind of waste, and every waste has to be a resource. So we use the leaves to breed the silkworms, of course, but also to make teas, the berries, the mulberries, the fruit to make jams, liqueur, and we have also a little agriturismo, or this local restaurant where we use this product. So we have also a piece of land. We are in organic, certified farming. So, because silkworm is really really sensible, sensible, it needs just one little molecule of a chemical that everybody dies. So it's really important that we are inside a pine forest where nobody is near us, so we are kind of in a really uncontaminated place, and we have also land where we grow vegetables and we use in this our small restaurant, this Agriturismo, and then we have the production of fabrics, of scarves, of flora, of jewels, artisan, so artisanal products.
Speaker 2:
We have what people call tourism. I don't like this term because we saw silk like an experience. So people come in our place and they come from all over the world to understand what really silk is, because when people think about silk they don't think about agriculture, they absolutely don't think about people working on a really particular condition. They absolutely don't know the magic of really the silk from the cocoon in something really magical. So we let people live this experience and it's not terrorism, because they we give something to them, but all the people give something to us because it's a really intimate experience. And then we have also an academy because we teach people how to breed the silkworm, how to all the silk reeling technologies, how to dye the natural product and how to weave on ancient looms, because our artisanal products are woven on ancient looms, because our products are woven on ancient looms. The Silk Academy is really working and 85% of our students come from abroad, because we are the last place in the western world who still do this kind of work.
Speaker 1:
That's just great. Then you run the museum too. What do you have in the world who still do this kind of work? That's just great. That's just great, and so, and then you run the museum too. So what do you have in the museum.
Speaker 2:
In the museum we have the different kind of silk, because there is no one type of silk, there are really a lot. Silk is a world. So here we understand how to recognize the different variety and kind of silk. There are the natural dyes, the different, the book that I mentioned before and the different dyes that we use. And there are the looms, and people can weave on ancient looms so they can leave their weft in the warp of some floral. So then we go to the countryside where, um, people can see our heroes, this, the silkworms. We reveal this silk together, this something that really this is probably the most magical thing of all the experience. And then we walk under the mulberry orchard. It's a really incredible place.
Speaker 1:
That's wonderful, that's really wonderful. So, before we go, where can people find you, what's the name of the website and how could? If they want, they could actually purchase things off the website too, right?
Speaker 2:
Yes, yes, yes, we have a shop on the website and our website is nidodisetacom. So if you want to get doing a spelling is like n-i-d-o-d-i-s-e-t-acom.
Speaker 1:
You know. Thank you, this was really enlightening. I never had any idea about silk. What a big industry it was in Calabria at one point in time.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, venice is absolutely known, florence is absolutely known, lyon, france, como Nobody thinks about Calabria and that's also why we are doing this job.
