The first forms of handcraft cottage industry as additional source of income to agriculture

Until the 19th century, in some cases even until the 20th century, the surviving of Val Gardena’s people was based on the self-subsistence of the mountain farms.

The soil in Val Garden is not especially fertile, as the valley is set at 1150 m in Ortisei and reaches 1700/1800 m in Selva Gardena. Moreover, the period in which the soil can be cultivated is relatively short, and the winters are very cold. In bad years, the farmers had to extract the potatoes and turnips even with a pick under the snow. Furthermore, the conditions in this valley are not suitable either for cereal or vine or other fruit cropping. Therefore, until the middle of the 19th century, the livestock production was the main economic sector for the majority of the people of Val Gardena. This activity is typical in mountain valleys.

Initially, the handcraft cottage industry represented only a very small part of the income of the families, and the work on the fields was not particularly fruitful, so that is was practised almost exclusively for the own requirements. Normally, people reared milk cows, oxen and sometimes also pigs. Although thanks to the handcraft the people of Val Gardena led a better life than the people of the neighbouring valleys, they were quite poor.

The products manufactured by the farmers were sold or exchanged in order to buy food or tools. The shortage of cash, a typical situation for mountain villages, was a further cause for the necessity to fabricate handcraft products to be sold on the market. One of these products was the loden, a special type of felt used for making the typical clothes of the Bavarian-Tyrolean culture. In the 16th century, the loden of Val Gardena was the most valuable and most diffused in Tyrol.

Only in the 17th century, the women and the girls of the valley started with the lace-making, and the men with the wood carving.