Our handicraft velvets

The origins of the printing techniques used for textiles date back to the 7th century, when Indian and Chinese printers were already active.
News of those techniques, from which our production draws its inspiration, reached Venice through Marco Polo, the famous explorer, who, on his return from his journeys to the Far East, described the workmanship, the customs and the usages of those far-away lands in his writings, especially of China, where he lived for over 17 years at the court of the Great Khan of Cathay.
Textile printing techniques, first introduced into our country by Marco Polo in the 14th century, were later improved and refined in accordance with western taste and culture.
Thus, the mythical Oriental animals with snake-like heads and scaly tails gradually made way for griffins, small peacocks, and winged lions, that is to say all the most symbolic and lofty iconography of the ancient Serenissima Republic.
Accordingly, flowers were to become, in the following centuries, lillies, jewels, delicate interwining patterns similar to lacework.
In the period between the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Modern Age, the Venetian Republic had the monopoly of trade with the Orient ; it was then the Serenissima that spread the fashion of those precious oriental fabrics throughout the Italian peninsula and also to the countries lying beyond the Alps.
Later on, different weaving techniques were introduced in other cities such as Florence, Genoa, and Lucca, where they became economically revelant, whereas block printing on textiles became more and more mechanized until it was totally industrialized in the 19th century.
The 19th century saw a resurgence of flavour for hand-block printed cloth in Venice, also thanks to Mariano Fortuny and his production. Fortuny, an artist originally from Spain, created some very particular velvet and cotton fabrics displaying very original design and patterns of high artistic quality.
However, without detracting anything from the work of a single artist, the Venitian tradition of high craftmanship is to be found in the sumptuous architecture of the palaces, the play of colours reflected by the gently flowing waters of the canals on the interior decoration of the stately rooms, the testimony of the pomp and power of an age gone by.
This is the framework in which our production must be seen. Our research has singled out velvet over all other fabrics for its instrincs qualities in capturing, holding and reflecting light, and its unsurpassed artistic results.