Venetian history

The Rubelli family is hereditary Venetians. And that explains a lot.

Passing the gallery

Magazine: N6 (205) 2015

The Rubelli family is hereditary Venetians. And that explains a lot.

For more than 120 years, the Rubelli family has been producing fabrics that Niccolo Favaretto Rubelli has wittily called far from minimalism. Indeed, having originated in an era when minimalism was unimaginable and impossible, the company produced velvet, Damascus, broker, brocade — royally luxurious fabrics — and continues to do so successfully now. That is, the fifth generation of the family produces interior textiles. It all began in 1889, when Lorenzo Rubelli bought a Venetian factory with a 200-year history. She was then famous throughout Europe for the production of silk brocade — a precious fabric with golden threads woven into silk.

The experience gained by generations never goes in vain: recently the Bolshoi Theater ordered the company to manufacture a new curtain — the only curtain in the world with a real gold thread, which took… 500 kilograms. They did it for four years; He was ready in 2011. Instead of silk, non-flammable modern material was used — Trevira CS (which, however, looks like real silk). In general, all the fabric decoration of the Bolshoi, broker and velvet, woven according to ancient patterns, is also RUBELLI. Experience with the theaters of the family is huge. The company's founder, Lorenzo, also supplied fabrics for the Venetian theater La Fenice. Then, nowadays, when the reconstruction of this theater was carried out (in 1996), the fabrics again ordered RUBELLI. In addition, among the customers are La Scala, Petruzzelli (in Bari), San Carlo (in Naples).

In 2003, the company decorated the halls of the famous Doge's Palace with its own fabrics. One of the last bright projects carried out jointly with Chuck Chjuning, art director of DONGHIA, is the interior decor of the Palazzo Gritti, where the prestigious hotel is now located. (In addition to DONGHIA, today RUBELLI group of companies includes such well-known brands as RUBELLI VENEZIA, DOMINIQUE KIEFFER BY RUBELLI and the ARMANI / CASA EXCLUSIVE TEXTILE BY RUBELLI division.) The company continues to develop and this year released its own new line of RUBELLI CASA furniture.

You can not live in Venice and not be included in the historical and cultural context of the city. That is why the new generation of the family continues to replenish the unique historical archive of the factory, in which there are already several thousand antique samples of fabrics. And the hobbies of the brothers are appropriate, Venetian: Niccolo collects ancient maps of Venice, and Lorenzo and Andrea know how to manage the gondola. As Lorenzo remembers, he learned this art at the age of 11, and at the same time he also learned the songs of the gondoliers.

And even in the 1980s, the factory was transferred from Venice to Kuchchago (Como region, Lombardy), where the most modern production was organized with machine tools controlled by a computer program, the amount did not change from changing places. In the production there is the very spirit of Venice, expressing itself in creativity, freedom, beauty and the highest understanding of luxury.

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