On the island of Giudecca, behind the doors of a former convent, we have been guarding our secrets for over a century

To arrive in Venice by water is to understand why Mariano Fortuny never left—the light alone is enough to captivate a person for a lifetime. The boat from Marco Polo airport pulls out through the lagoon, past low industrial shorelines, and then the city appears all at once, as if someone raised a curtain. The noise falls away, and the light softens, like a Canaletto painting. Today, this is one of the last places in Europe where hand-printed textiles are still produced using traditional methods.

From the fondamenta—the Venetian word for sidewalk—our name is visible on the building, the only brand in Venice with its name on its façade. A pair of massive black gates set into ancient brick, a small gold button, a ring that echoes through the building, the sound carrying across a century of silent rooms. This is how the world enters our Factory, thirty feet from the water.

Here, since 1922, Fortuny has produced some of the most distinctive Venetian textiles in history.

The gates open onto a cobblestone walkway: offices and the Palazzina to the left, the Factory to the right. Venice is already the quietest city in the world, but this is something else—just the low hum of machines making art, the murmur of workers in the courtyard, the wind, and birds. In spring, the entire Factory wall disappears beneath white roses, blooming for a few weeks before they are gone. The air carries the scent of flowers, and beneath it, the salt of the lagoon.

Here, since 1922, we have produced some of the most distinctive Venetian textiles in history.

Why Traditional Textile Printing Still Matters

Elsewhere in the modern world, far from here, modern textile production is built for speed and uniformity. Rolls of fabric emerge from industrial facilities with mechanical precision. Every yard is identical and every colorway mathematically consistent.

Yet, we have always practiced traditional textile printing: the process of creating hand-printed fabric using layered applications of pigment, manual alignment, and artisanal techniques rather than automated industrial production. Patterns are built in layers, each applied by artisans who align screens by eye and adjust pressure by feel. Colors are mixed according to formulas refined over generations. The result is cloth that carries evidence of the human decisions behind its making: minute shifts in metallic sheen, subtle differences in saturation, gentle irregularities that prove no modern technology was involved. These are the qualities that interior designers prize—the difference between a room that feels fashionable today, and one that will stand the test of time.

Inside the Workshop on Giudecca

After the First World War, Fortuny recognized the world had changed. In 1919, as Guillermo de Osma recounts in Fortuny: His Life and Work, he formed a new company with his friend Giancarlo Stucky—Società Anonima Fortuny—dedicated exclusively to textile production. The location they chose was an abandoned convent on Giudecca, closed by Napoleon in the early 1800s.

What our Founder built here was far more than a production facility. As de Osma writes, he “assumed full responsibility for the entire process,” from devising the technical means of production to training about 100 employees in specialist skills. He never sought external assistance, preferring “to solve everything behind closed doors, always maintaining a certain aura of mystery.”

That aura persists. In one corner, printing screens lean like oversized artworks waiting their turn. Bolts of cloth—velvets, cottons, silk blends—stand in casual towers, their colors shifting in the light. Deep inky blues give way to tarnished golds and soft mineral greens. Even at rest, the textiles appear animated, designed to interact with that particular quality of Venetian light. Many visitors have been moved to tears at their very sight.

The Art of Hand-Printed Fabrics

Each hand-printed fabric is created through a slow, multi-step process where layers of color are applied individually rather than all at once. Our first printed cottons were made from Egyptian long staple cotton, chosen for its absorbency. According to de Osma, the printing technique pursued a singular goal: “high quality, depth of color and designs that were nearly always based on classical motifs.” Those classical motifs are still the foundation—Byzantine ornament, Renaissance pattern, Islamic geometry, the decorative traditions of ancient Greece and Egypt—transformed into work so original and mysterious that Fortuny became known as “the Magician of Venice.”

The printing process explains why. A single length of fabric may pass through multiple stages, each layer of color building on the last. Metallic pigments (a Fortuny signature) require particular expertise. Hand-applied metallics create areas of greater and lesser density. Light catches these surfaces at different intensities depending on the viewing angle. The effect reveals new qualities as a room’s light shifts throughout the day.

Our Founder created his own dye formulations based on what we describe as “ancient techniques of the masters.” Marcel Proust immortalized his fashions in his book Remembrance of Things Past, calling them “faithfully antique but markedly original”—a description that remains, more than a century later, the most precise account of Fortuny’s oeuvre.

Why Designers Still Choose Handmade Textiles

For interior designers, hand-printed textiles offer three key advantages: longevity, visual depth, and uniqueness. Quality velvet develops subtle variations over years of use and becomes heirloom. Hand-printed cotton maintains its clarity while gaining warmth. The colors deepen rather than fade. For designers working on projects intended to last—private residences, historic restorations—these qualities justify the investment many times over.

As de Osma records, around 1920 Fortuny decorated the gaming room of the Hotel Excelsior on the Lido, rejecting traditional wallpaper in favor of loose fabrics hung from rails like enormous curtains. His approach of treating fabric as architecture rather than ornament became a hallmark of our House. The folds added movement and warmth while producing a play of light that made the colors stand out.

Venice as a Textile Capital

For centuries, Venetian textiles have been associated with innovation, trade, and craftsmanship at the highest level. The city’s light itself shapes the fabric. Printing methods evolved in response to the particular luminosity of this city—the way light reflects off water, the atmospheric softness of the lagoon. It is no coincidence that a 1924 review in La Renaissance de l’Art Français described encountering our textiles as “bewitching.” Today, Venice’s premier architect Alberto Torsello describes the Factory as “a vibrant and historic home of creativity for artists to make new generations of work.”

The city’s role as a textile capital stretches back centuries, to the silk routes that carried fabric from China through the Middle East and into European markets. Venice was where East met West—where Asian silk traditions merged with European design sensibilities to create an entirely new textile culture. This history is embedded in every bolt of our fabric. As our Creative Director, Mickey Riad, has said: “There is an ongoing knowledge transfer between artists who continue uncovering the DNA of our roots to illuminate the way forward.”

And when visitors leave—past the white roses, the fondamenta, back across the Giudecca canal—Venice recedes the way it arrived, all at once. Then there is only the lagoon, flat, and silver and mysterious. But the light stays. It stays in the fabric, in the memory of the hand that made it, in every room that holds a piece of what we have made here.

Fortuny’s textile collections offer designers a resource tested by time rather than trends.

Request samples or learn more through Fortuny Bespoke.