Rubelli | Querini

A four-centimetre repeat is very small for a figured velvet, and nothing has been simplified to achieve it. The motif is built the proper way, the shape itself in cut pile with a border of uncut loop around it, exactly as a large figure would be handled. Fabrics like this were in use in the second half of the sixteenth century.

At this scale the pattern does not read as a pattern from across a room. What you see is a fine, even texture that shifts tone as you move, those transitions coming from the two registers of pile working against the ground, with eleven percent metallic weft behind them.

Silk pile on silk and cotton, 270 g, 60 cm wide, two colourways. Woven by hand at Cucciago at a few centimetres a day: a cushion, a panel, the back of a chair. Made in Italy.