Fondazione Rubelli, located in the Ca’ Pisani Rubelli palazzo, the family’s centuries-old home, was established in 2018 with the aim of safeguarding and showcasing the cultural, historical and contemporary heritage of Rubelli S.p.A.
The palazzo is the privileged place for housing the Rubelli Historical Archive and the Alessandro Favaretto Rubelli Collection.
The latter brings together more than 3,000 drapes, cloths, fragments, liturgical furnishing fabrics, period costumes, sample books and over 13,000 textile samples from closed mills. Covering a timeline from the 15th to the 20th century, the collection bears witness to the history of not only European textiles but also oriental, pre-Columbian and African types.
The Rubelli Historical Archive is made up of more than 50,000 textile artefacts including swatches, cloths, sample books, little skeins and braid, accompanied by more than a thousand pointed papers and preparatory drawings for the creation of the fabrics.
Together with a large number of documents (letters, registers, accounting documents, etc.) and photographs, the archive is demonstration of the uninterrupted activity of the company from 1889, the year of its foundation, to the present day.
One of the most prestigious collections in the Rubelli Historical Archive is the Velvet Collection, where we can admire hundreds of Venetian soprarizzi velvet fabrics reworked and reproduced in the 1920s with decorative motifs taken from the classical Sasanian, Byzantine, Renaissance ad inferriata and Baroque “giardino” velvets repertoire.
It demonstrates the excellence achieved by Rubelli – which until the 1960s had no less than 60 hand-operated velvet looms in the city of canals – in reproducing the sixteenth-century velvet that made Venice famous throughout the world.
The Punteggiato, reproduced here and created by Giò Ponti for the Venice Biennale in 1934, is one of the iconic fabrics of the company, always ready to collaborate with great artists, designers and architects.
The Fondazione showcases this heritage in the Museo Storico Rubelli through a rotating exhibition of theme displays under the guidance and curation of experts in the field.
Opening drawer after drawer, a wonderful testimony of the history of textile art opens out under our gaze: from the pre-Columbian finds, via the majestic severity of the Renaissance fabrics, the sumptuous Baroque textile production, the whimsical “bizarres”, the exotic chinoiseries, the rich scores of the “meander” fabrics, the graphics of the chiné à la branche, up to the austere stripes of the last part of the 19th century and the very modern contemporary creations.
Fondazione Rubelli can be visited on the following days only in a guided tour and booking by sending an email to: museo@rubelli.com
Thursday: visit at 4 pm
Friday: first visit at 11 am – second visit at 4 pm
Admission is free during the hours and on the dates stated, otherwise a charge is made.
Ca’ Pisani Rubelli, San Marco, 3395 / 3393 (showroom)
30124 Venice
Tel. +39 041 241 7329
