Vintage Rubelli Silk Velvet Cushion Cover

In 1858 a Venetian firm bought the eighteenth-century silk-weaving works of a family called Panciera - looms that had already been running for a hundred years. In 1889 the business passed to Lorenzo Rubelli, and the name has stayed on the door since. The house still weaves in Venice today, on frames built before photography existed, turning out the damasks and velvets that dressed Italy's royal train and hung as the curtain at La Fenice.

This cover is cut from a vintage length of that velvet - a deep garnet ground, its pile combed into broad ribbed bands crossing a plainer field, surfacing and disappearing as the light moves across it, reading almost as a woven checkerboard where the bands overlap. Cut once. It will not be rewoven.