Rubelli | Rialto

Seventy-five centimetres is a long vertical repeat by any measure, and on a cloth only 60 cm wide it has a direct consequence. The design stands taller than the fabric is broad, so nothing smaller than a panel will show a complete unit of it. Order for the repeat rather than for the area.

The construction is a silk pile on a silk and cotton ground at 180 g, which is light for a figured velvet at this scale. Soprarizzo gives it its relief: cut pile against uncut loop, one register catching light and the other holding it, so the figure reads as a change of surface and moves as the light does.

Woven by hand at Rubelli's Cucciago mill on nineteenth-century looms, at a few centimetres a day, in a single colourway. Made in Italy.