Artopia partners with Lanificio Leo, Calabria's oldest and most prestigious wool mill, to create a series of artist blankets. The protagonist of the project is Elena Mazzi, who has designed three maps as part of her research on the Polar Silk Road to interpret the profound geopolitical and cultural transformations taking place in the Arctic regions.
The artist's research, which focuses on the relationship between climate change and landscape transformation and the interaction between humans and the environment, is intertwined with Lanificio Leo's craftsmanship and refined experimentation with materials. This dialogue has given rise to a limited series of three blankets, each produced in seven copies, made from precious extra-fine merino wool.

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Starting from the study of the most recent political and commercial developments triggered by climate change, Elena Mazzi has been researching the new trade routes at the Poles, specifically the Polar Silk Road. This new trade route emerging in the Arctic with the melting of the glaciers and connecting Europe, Russia and China develops as an alternative “northern route” to the traditional maritime ones, exploiting the subsoil of the Arctic seas, which contain 20% of the planet’s global resources, including oil, gas, uranium, gold, platinum and zinc. With the Polar Silk Road project, Mazzi analyzes the complex intertwining of economics, geopolitics, ecology and mobility within the Arctic regions most affected by the infrastructural and political transformations linked to the Polar Silk Road.

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Inspired by Elena Mazzi's research, the plaid are made from 100% extra-fine 19.5 micron merino virgin wool and it’s produced using a 3-colour piqué jacquard knit, emphasising the bitmap aesthetic through the use of dithering algorithms to process the original design. ​​​