A City Practising Textiles
In the ambiguity of its own destiny, Venice could inspire a certain sadness. But hope is the last to die. Some institutions and commercial traits inherited from its past remain alive, thanks to the city’s commercial nature, even now that Venice has partly given up real production on the island. This is commerce in the oldest and purest sense of the word, connected to the alchemy of material transformations and to encounters between people.
For this newsletter, we turned to surveys and statistics, today’s oracles. They tell us how things work and, yesterday as today, shape the central narrative and the trajectories a place will take. Textiles and cities already have much in common, if we think of expressions such as the “urban fabric.”
Documents held in the Archivio di Stato di Venezia reveal how deeply textiles belonged to the life of the city. According to a census from 1761, 721 households worked in silk spinning, 633 as strazzaroli, making and trading clothing and accessories, 322 sold linen, 167 worked with wool and 117 in dyeing. At least 58 businesses belonging to this system were located around Rialto.
Il Bancogiro di Rialto, Gabriele Bella, Pinacoteca Querini Stampalia.
This is no coincidence. Beyond commerce, Venice has always had a natural inclination towards exchange, towards the routes of Eastern wealth and towards connecting different worlds. Here, however, it is the technique that we want to remember. When we think of Venice, the first textile that comes to mind is undoubtedly silk, but textile development in this region was inseparable from technological development.
While retracing this history, which belongs to us and feels particularly close, especially now that the places seriously studying textiles in Venice can be counted on one hand, we came across an extraordinary document from 1607. In a series of plates now held at the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Vittorio Zonca, an architect and mechanic from Padua, illustrated an ingenious water-powered spinning machine and a fulling mill.
Novo Teatro di Macchina e di Edifici, Vittorio Zonca, 1607.
As cities increasingly become places of transit, while spaces of gathering, making and tangible exchange slowly disappear, technical language suffers too. If almost two thousand Venetian families once worked with textiles, without counting those making leather goods, shoes and bags, imagine the words that could be heard along Fondamenta de Le Veste, Ramo and Corte della Borsa, Sottoportego dei Lavatori di Lana or Ponte del Tenero. All still exist, at least in name. How much knowledge could pass from one person to another simply through words?
We would therefore like to leave you with a small textile dictionary, created to preserve some of these names and encourage a deeper culture of fabric. A way to feel, for a moment, a little like textile craftspeople, or simply to collect a few tips for the next visit to your favourite fabric seller.
Textile Dictionary, a first taste
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Tinto in filo — Yarn-dyed
A method in which yarns are dyed after spinning but before weaving. It allows differently coloured yarns to be interlaced and gives woven patterns definition throughout the fabric. See Savio.
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Ordito e trama — Warp and weft
Warp is the system of parallel yarns held under tension lengthwise on the loom. Weft is the yarn inserted across the warp, passing over and under it to form the fabric. See Limen.
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Armatura raso — Satin weave
One of the three fundamental weave structures, alongside plain weave and twill. Its interlacing points are spaced apart to produce long yarn floats, creating a smooth, compact surface with greater lustre. See Raso 121 in Giallo citrino and Limen.
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Tessitura jacquard — Jacquard weaving
A method of weaving in which individual warp ends, or small groups of ends, can be raised independently. This allows complex motifs and changes of structure to be woven directly into the cloth. See Flora in Aria.
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Finissaggio AIRO® — AIRO® finishing
A mechanical finishing process in which fabric is transported through tubes by air, repeatedly striking an impact grid before returning to the treatment chamber. The action increases softness, volume and drape without using rollers to carry the cloth. See Galia in Zaffiro Blue and Goccia in Optical White.
