The workshop in Palazzo Pesaro degli Orfei

Mariano and Henriette Fortuny

Mariano Fortuny, polyhedric artist of Spanish origins, met Henriette Nigrin (his future wife and muse) in Paris in 1902. At that time Marino was a known artist in the fields of painting and theatre lighting. Henriette was a beautiful young woman with a lively intelligence.

The love at first sight was inevitable and Mariano brought Henriette in Venice with him, giving the start not only to their lives together (which was till 1949 with Mariano’s death) but also to a rousing artistic collaboration.

Printing on fabric

In 1910 Fortuny patented an innovative system for the multi-colour printing on fabric. The process provided for the use of matrices made of a thin silk fabric coated with a colloidal substance (gelatine) on which the pattern would be applied by means of an alkaline solution. The pattern could be done by hand, as for a painting, or via a photographic-type printing system.

The Delphos

Without any doubt the greatest success of the workshop was the creation of the Delphos, a monochrome gown of a simple, essential form, a sort of cylinder initially consisting of four pieces of fabric (which by 1919–20 had become five) made in satin or silk taffeta sewn along the long sides in a vertical sequence and continuing to form short sleeves.

The dense vertical waves of each piece of fabric forming the gown could total up to about 450 folds. It took about two hours to do the pleating, many more to eliminate the residues of the bonding agents and about eight hours to put the pieces together and actually make the dress.

The atelier's creations gave shape to the peculiar and modern figurative language of Fortuny, the result of a cultivated and refined re-elaboration of suggestions drawn from different eras and cultures: from the Greek-Minoic world to Coptic motifs and to the Middle East, from Hispano-Moorish art to the Italian Renaissance and the Far East

"They are veils that seem embroidered and painted by the sun, touched by the moon, sprinkled with stardust … And what to say about the gold imprinted on those stuffs? Venetian gold, red gold, pink gold, white gold, bleu, flowery gold” (Henri Lavedan, 22 April 1911, L’Illustration)

Lamps

Another important aspect of the workshop activity was the interior design production. The Fortuny’s atelier created elegant hanging lamps in printed silk gauze and in various shapes, like Cesendello, Sherazade o Saturno

The printing technique was called “direct” and done manually, by means of specially carved boxwood blocks; the pigment would be applied by means of a brush to the areas to be impressed on the fabric.

With this method derived from the Japanese katagami, developed in the thirteenth century during the Kamakura era, it was not technically possible to produce large surfaces; so the workshop, after various experiments, arrived at the use of screen printing, first on paper and then on emulsified cotton canvas.

Applied for the first time around 1915 in a printing machine
designed and built specifically for the purpose – a semi-mechanical rotary printer – the continuous band matrices made it possible to overcome considerable difficulties (such as the high cost of manual printing) while, conversely, increasing production quantities without changing the artistic effects.

While producing refined ornamental quotations from the past, for the design of new decorative forms the Fortuny workshop also drew on contemporary tastes. Clear proof of this comes from some drawings of stylised floral motifs clearly derived from the Jugendstil.

The process

In the workshop in Palazzo Pesaro degli Orfei, every process was carried out in line with a “craft” concept, understood as the constant control of every stage of production: from the mixing of colours to the preparation of glues, from the design of the decorative motif to the pattern on the printing block.

The workshop soon became a veritable factory, arriving at a workforce of over 100 workers in 1910.

The patterns of the abayas and djellabbaa, of the bournous, tunics, cassocks, capes, cloths and silk, velvet or cotton furnishing fabrics were designed in very close relationship with the shapes and colours of the garments and fabrics for which they were destined.

After Mariano's death in 1949, Henriette closed the workshop in Palazzo degli Orfei, leaving the management of the textile factory on the Giudecca island - that the husband created before World War II - to the american friend Elsie McNeill.

Palazzo Fortuny is now devoted to preserving the heritage and legacy of Mariano Fortuny. The building retains the rooms and structures created by the couple, together with tapestries and collections. Four floors can be visited, and the museum hosts exhibitions closely connected to the spirit of Fortuny and his eclectic research and experimental interests.