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Louis Ruffini (Turin c.1750 - Edinburgh 1807) professional embroiderer and teacher of Italian and French.

According to a 1794 entry in the 'Register of Aliens', held in the Edinburgh City Archives, Louis Ruffini (Ruffin) left Turin in 1762 and arrived in Edinburgh in 1782. [1] He omitted to mention that he spent some time prior to this in London, as the London Gazette for January 19, 1779 recorded the bankruptsy of "Nathan Hendricks and Louis Ruffin of Mitre Court, Aldgate, London, merchants, dealers, chapmen and co-partners". [2]

In September 1782 Ruffini established an Academy for young gentlemen, at 141 Nicholson Street where he offered tuition in writing, arithmetic, Italian and French, with visiting Masters teaching riding, fencing, dancing and military exercise. His plan was ambitious but there were no further advertisements after the first two and it is unlikely that the Academy prospered. [3] As a result of this setback he changed tack, and in 1783 he set up a manufactory in Edinburgh producing ‘Dresden work, Tambouring and other sewing’. This aspect of his work was the subject of a book The Flowerers, the Origins and History of Ayrshire Needlework, published by Margaret Swain in 1955. [4] ‘Dresden work or Saxony lace’ as Margaret pointed out ‘was a favourite choice for the ruffles on gentlemen’s shirts, the sheer surface of the linen being given the delicacy of lace by the variety of pulled stitches forming the design. Because no threads were drawn [removed], the material was stronger than its fragile appearance suggested, and it stood up to the onslaughts of the washerwoman better than bone lace’. As with many others developing new means of production, Ruffini applied to the Board of Manufactures in January 1783 for assistance to pay his rent. [5] He was given £20 and their records show that he made numerous applications, including one in March 1785, claiming that his apprentice girls, now 72 in number, were in poor health because of their working and living conditions. The Board allowed him £30, a part of which was for the rental of new premises.

The house Ruffini rented in 1783, with the aid of the Board of Manufactures was ‘Cragside’, standing at St. Leonard's Hill on the south side of the City of Edinburgh. It overlooked Salisbury Crags and the great sweep of the valley leading down to Holyrood and had a small area with space for his manufactory. It was perched on the wall of the King's Park, part of the extensive grounds of Holyrood Palace, giving it the added advantage that the occupier could simply take a short walk to be within the protection of the Palace and by tradition, to be safe from potential creditors. It was a facility Ruffini would require sooner than perhaps he had planned. With the production of fine linen in decline in Edinburgh, Ruffini decided to concentrate instead on the embroidery of muslin, then becoming very fashionable for ladies dresses. Tambouring or embroidering designs on muslin stretched over small hoops had been practiced by ladies in Britain for some time and professional embroiderers on the continent had used larger frames, illustrated by Diderot in his Encyclopédie in 1751, where two embroiderers could sit either side of a frame and work towards each other. Ruffini took this a stage further and set up a workroom based on the highly successful manufactories in the west of Scotland where girls, known as ‘pencillers’, sat at long tables and hand coloured sections of linen and cotton that had previously been printed with a design using wood blocks. No way had been found to print in green and the girls would overpaint the blue areas with yellow to create the full range of colour. Ruffini used rollers to stretch fine cotton gauze out along tables, allowing large numbers of apprentice girls to sit on either side and embroider small floral borders or all-over designs or ‘sprigs’. While his method was not mechanised it was very efficient and the idea of such a production line for the embroidery of muslin was entirely new in Britain and Ruffini was recognized for his inventiveness. Luigi Angiolini, an Italian visitor to Scotland in 1787-8, noted that ‘Mr. Ruffini, a Piedmontese, who did import there with much risk and in a new and able way, a manufacture which was not there before. I doubt very much whether he will ever be able to make his fortune, as far as I can judge from what I have seen and heard'. [6]

Ruffini built a little too rapidly on his early success. The Statistical Account for Scotland for 1794 reported that he had a second embroidery factory at Musselburgh, near Edinburgh, and that at the suggestion of the factor to the Duke of Buccleuch, he had opened yet another in Dalkeith in 1790. His foreman there in 1791 was John Halbeck, a native of Switzerland who had worked in London for fifteen years and spent eight years in Glasgow and Kilmarnock, an indication of the tight knit community within which Ruffini operated. The effects of his ambition began to emerge shortly before 22 August 1786, when John Phol, a ‘habitmaker’ and another member of the Scottish émigré community, pursued him for payment of an account for britches. By the 30th September Ruffini had come to an agreement that he would settle his account with Phol on his return from London 'in about a month’s time'. By December he had returned but the money was still not forthcoming and the matter was not settled until 1787.

Ruffini's activities in London have never been explored but he appears to have been well connected there. The London Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser for 19 March 1788 records a "Mr. Ruffini of Pall Mall" setting out proposals for a school for the maintenance and education of fifteen young girls, the daughters of indigent Freemasons, under the patronage of the Her Royal Highness, the Duchess of Cumberland. Nothing appears to have come from this although further details were promised.

In July 1786 he advertised in the Glasgow Courier, his intention to set up a factory in Glasgow but this proved to be his undoing and by March 1791 he had outstanding debts there in excess of £1,400. Perhaps in an attempt to shore up his finances he had married Mary Steel, daughter of Dr. John Steel of Jamaica on 16 April 1790. [7] But he was declared bankrupt and the list of his creditors in Glasgow is instructive, headed by John Kirkland, Deacon of the Incorporation of Weavers (1788-9) and trading in the High Street as a merchant. Ruffini owed him a total of £411.14.0. The others included Hugh Cross of Cross, Rutherford & Smith (£326.17.6), John Sword, spirit dealer and manufacturer (£287.9.0), David Young, linen draper and silk mercer (£23.19.5) and David Dale (1739-1806), merchant and banker (£93.18.6). The timing in relation to the debt with the last is significant as 1786 was the year in which Dale took complete control of the mill at New Lanark, his partner Richard Arkwright having lost a court battle in London to protect his patents for the water frame and other machinery in use there. Dale was able to continue production without having to pay Arkwright for the privilege and in 1798 he sold the business to a consortium, including his soon to be son-in-law, Robert Owen for £60,000.

In order to continue supporting his family, Ruffini petitioned the Trustees for his creditors for the use of his tambouring equipment and furniture, stating that he had hopes of raising a considerable sum from ‘friends in the north of England’. These, it turned out were relatives by his marriage to Mary Lewes and in March 1792, William Cockayne, William Lewes and Miss Mary Lewes agreed to pay just over £33. Later ‘Dr. Cockayne’ paid the £100 demanded by the Trustees for the use of furniture and utensils, a hefty sum considering that this represents over £5,000 today. This is possibly the same William Cockayne who married Sophia Lewes in London in 1771 and was the apothecary and surgeon in the Infirmary in Bamburgh Castle.

Ruffini’s sequestration did not ease his position and he found himself pursued by other creditors in Edinburgh. After his appearance in Glasgow he applied to the Court for protection and did so on the 1st Dec. 1792 from Musselburgh and in May, and November of 1793 and 1794, from Dalkeith, marking in a dramatic way his retreat from the City. In 1801 he made one last attempt to solicit the support of the Board of Manufactures in re-establishing his business but they refused, having heard that the traders in Glasgow had set up a subscription for his benefit. He found himself in prison from 29th to 31st May 1803 and obtained release on the intervention of his surgeon who testified that his life was in danger. He was only allowed out until he was well enough to return and he was in prison again in July 1804, the result of a degree of Cessio Bonorum against him. [8] As a special concession on this occasion he was allowed to dispense with wearing the grey cloth garment, traditionally provided by his creditors as a very public sign of a bankrupt. He owed £107. 17. 0 to a list of Edinburgh creditors, mainly for domestic supplies, including a draper David Bridges whose shop became a well known meeting place for artists and antiquarians.

Ruffini died in Edinburgh on 3 June 1807; "Lewis Ruffin, Teacher of the Italian language, born near Turin, Italy, from the house of Mrs. Chapman, Rose St. died of an asthma. Buried at the foot of Dick's ground aged 40 [sic. added later]" [9] On 6 June 1807, three days after her father's death, Maria Ruffini married Pasquale Casella (b. 1781) a 'drawing master' from Como in Italy who had arrived in Edinburgh in .

In June 1Octavia Maria Ruffini to Pasquale Casella in Edinburgh in June 1807, where the bride gave her father as Louis Ruffini, suggests that there may have been a number of other children in the Ruffini household, about whom we know little or nothing. Octavia Maria’s son Louis or Luigi Pasquale Casella [1809 -1897] would become one of the great instrument makers of the nineteenth century.

Ironically, it was his status as a bankrupt that brought Ruffini’s most significant connections. In January 1789 he wrote, in French, to Dr. Joseph Black MD [1728-1799] at the University of Edinburgh, requesting a reference for William Roebuck, son of Dr. John Roebuck MD [1718-1794]. He had a commission from the court of Victor Amadeus III, King of Sardinia, to find a mining expert and intended recommending William. These are very interesting connections as Black and Roebuck were the leading chemists and entrepreneurs of their day. John Roebuck had developed a cheap method of manufacturing sulphuric acid, used widely in the bleaching and colour printing of calico and linen, and had set up a factory in Prestonpans to the east of Edinburgh in 1749. He went on to establish the Carron iron works in Stirlingshire in 1760 before attempting coal mining, which was to be his undoing. His mines flooded, leading him to support James Watt with the development of his steam engine and in the process to loose everything he had worked for. In Ruffini, John Roebuck found a kindred spirit and no doubt grasped the opportunity to promote the interests of his son, as he was unable to provide for his wife and family at the time of his death in 1794. William Roebuck’s remarkable report, which went some way towards establishing coal mining as the mainstay of the Sardinian economy, exists in the Archivio di Stato, Turin and in it he mentions that, ‘Signor Ruffini showed me some fossilised coal which had been given him by Professor Regis...

Ruffini found it difficult to source the sheer, almost transparent linen necessary for Dresden work.

References

  1. ^ Edinburgh City Archives. MSS Register of Aliens, Vol. I, p. 43.
  2. ^ Ruffini is not mentioned in any of the manuscript material collected for the production of A. Manno: Il Patriziato Subalpino. (Firenze 1895-6). Private letter from Dr. Giovanna Bernard, Biblioteca Reale, Turin. 12th September 1989.
  3. ^ Caledonian Mercury: 28th September 1782, p. 1(b), repeated 9th October, p. 1(a).
  4. ^ Swain, Margaret H.: The Flowerers. The Origins and History of Ayrshire Needlework. London and (Edinburgh, 1955 Chapter 4.
  5. ^ NAS, NG1/1/23. Minutes of the Board of Manufactures, 29th January 1783.
  6. ^ 'Luigi Angiolini,'Lettere sopra l’Inghilterra Scozia e Olanda in 1790
  7. ^ OPR 685/1 520 63. John Steel is associated with seven estates in Jamaica. He was registered with 72 slaves in 1832 and claimed over £1000 in compensation in 1838.
  8. ^ NAS. CS234 R12/13, 1804. Decreet of Cessio Bonorum dated 11th July 1804.
  9. ^ South Leith Parish Church, OPR 692/2 310 600 63
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