Rubelli | Tintoretto Ancien

Polychrome bouquets set in staggered parallel bands: an eighteenth-century arrangement, classical in its bones and rococo in its handling. The bands are offset rather than aligned, which is what keeps a design of this regularity from behaving like wallpaper.

Colour is the difficult part. Several different colours of pile are carried in the same cloth, each needing its own handling on the loom, and the polychromy that results is delicate rather than emphatic. With a 59 cm repeat on a 60 cm loom width, a single unit takes up almost the whole cloth.

Silk pile on a silk and cotton ground at 200 g, one colourway. Hand weaving at Cucciago on nineteenth-century looms, measured in centimetres a day, and it wants a cushion, a panel or a chair back where it can be examined. Made in Italy.