Photo: Benoît Prieur · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons

Museo del Bisso

Workshop museum in Sant’Antioco devoted to weaving byssus, the “sea silk”, with works by master weaver Chiara Vigo; visits by appointment.

Opening hours unknownFree admission

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Limited operations. Visits by appointment only, for groups of up to 12 people, in the master's workshop.

About the museum

The Museo del Bisso is a workshop museum dedicated to the techniques of working byssus, the silky fibre obtained from the filaments of the bivalve mollusc Pinna nobilis, also called “sea silk”. At the centre of the museum is the byssus master Chiara Vigo, who preserves ancient knowledge handed down within the family and orally from master to master, and who continues to weave by hand on traditional looms, with a linen warp and a byssus weft worked by hand with the fingernails.

The master's some seventy cloths, partly kept in Sant'Antioco and partly exhibited in museums such as the Museum der Kulturen in Basel and the national museum of arts in Rome, reproduce designs handed down from generation to generation: lions, lapwings, trees of life, moons and Nuragic ships, all with a symbolic meaning. Since 2005, visitors from all over the world have come to the “living museum” to listen to the master and watch her at work.

According to the master's website, in 2016 the municipality forced the museum to close in its original form. Today visits take place by appointment in the room that was the grandmother's workshop, on Viale Regina Margherita, a few steps from the Basilica of Sant'Antioco, and the museum is sustained by donations, without public funding. Byssus is neither sold nor bought: works can only be given or received.