Furnishing fabrics, an Extraordinary story: Mariano Fortuny
In Venice there is the historic factory of Mariano Fortuny.He was an eclectic genius of the early Twentieth century, as well as a painter and stylist, he invented a procedure for decorating art fabrics that have no equal in the world.
They are cotton canvases beautifully decorated with ancient colors, silver, gold, in arabesques that refer to the great tradition of the Venetian eighteenth century, the Florentine Renaissance and oriental manufactures.
They are soft and full-bodied, the hand runs through the reliefs of the print and the eye enjoys the rhythm, never the same, of the motifs that are enhanced on backgrounds with iridescent shades. For many, their beauty is almost legendary. They are canvases used for interior decoration and furnish the dimensions of many celebrities and royal houses all over the world.
There factory of secrets
The property ownership, for over fifty years, is American, but the factory continues its work with the Venetian rhythms, overlooking the Giudecca Canal. Everything has remained unchanged since the 1920s: rooms, machines, molds, the same products as the times gone by. The process has always been a mystery: nobody has access to the factory, except the employees.
The “recipes” are known to only four people, each related to their own business segment.
Secret the ingredients – pigments, glues, fixatives, all natural; secret the method, developed by Mariano Fortuny, which is made through the machines he himself designed and remained intact.
From the beginning of the production of a canvas – it is Egyptian cotton with long fiber of excellent quality – at its conclusion dozens of passages occur and they spend in all, between working and resting stasis, three, four months. The result is always a unique piece
The genius behind the fabric
Owning a Fortuny fabric – it could be a curtain, an upholstery, a bedspread – means having an authentic and, in some way, unrepeatable work of art.
Mariano Fortunity was an artist of European fame, who expressed his taste for art, his technical skills, historical culture and his manual skills in these fabrics. Painter, inventor, photographer, fashion creator and furniture designer.
As a stylist he was contested by jet set women such as Eleonora Duse, the Marquise Rothschild, Isadora Duncan.
It is he who inspired the greatest high fashion designers of the twentieth century, from Valentino to Issey Miyake. A fashion revolutionary who freed women from constraints at the beginning of the last century, offered her elegance and comfort in unforgettable clothes.
The motto of the company is as relevant today as then, “Always beautiful never the same”:
each fabric is, in fact, a work of art, unique in terms of rendering and color, which, like all truly precious objects, is designed to be handed down from generation to generation.
