Raw Hemp Bark

Requiring extreme amounts of labour, hemp cultivation, spinning and weaving decreased in popularity throughout the 18th and 19th century as new fibers were being introduced to the market. Nicknamed, the ‘quello delle centro operazioni’ or "substance of a hundred operations" by Italians, hemp plants require significant care and attention to grow properly. The true difficulty, however, lies in extracting bark from the stem of the plant, and converting that bark into fibers. The adhesive substances which keep bark and stem together is dissolved through micro-biological processes, such as water-retting, which are time-consumming and necessitate minutely-supervised conditions.