Great swirling arabesques in gold, worked at the scale the late Renaissance liked, when a gold-embroidered cloth was a way of stating what a house was. Rubelli recovers the variety of that surface, the shifts between raised and flat, matt and burnished, with the lisere technique, which lets a weft float on the face where the pattern needs it and drop behind where it does not.
The ground beneath is iridescent, and the effect is of ornament floating on moving water rather than sitting on cloth. Flowers push up through the arabesque, drawn loosely enough to feel dreamt rather than observed.
It is 84 per cent cotton, with metallic yarn for the gold, 490 g at 140 cm, with a 46 cm vertical repeat against 70 cm across, half the width. Ten colourways, several of them dark, and dark is where the metal does most work. Made in Italy.
