Rubelli | Modern Art Ancien

Alfredo Carnelutti, a Milanese painter, drew this for the 1934 Venice Biennale, where it was shown in the decorative arts pavilion. It looks its date: wavy horizontal bands, uneven in width, running across a ground of diamonds picked out in metallic thread. Rubelli reads the bands as the sandbanks of the lagoon, which is a fair account of how they behave.

The repeat is short at 25 cm, so the bands stack closely and the effect is graphic rather than pictorial. Eleven percent metallic weft carries the diamonds; silk pile on a silk and cotton ground carries the rest, at 280 g.

Two colourways, 60 cm wide, hand-woven at Cucciago on nineteenth-century looms at a few centimetres a day. Cushions, panels and chair backs rather than seating. Made in Italy.