A door in Venice
/Once back from Venice, Gabe wanted to write about an experience he’d had in La Serenissima. I figured he’d write about learning to row a gondola or perhaps the Japanese small plates lunch that had left him wide-eyed with wonder. Nope! He wanted to write about Bevilacqua, the weaving studio we visited. I wrote about this as well in my post on Venice, but I love the sheer Gabe-ness of what he brings to the story.
A Door in Venice
On the fifth day of our visit to Venice, we visited an ancient establishment called “Bevilacqua,” named after the founder Luigi Bevilacqua, who founded the tesitura (textile mill) in 1875. This textile mill is one of the oldest in the world, still using textile machines made in the 18th century. There is evidence that weaving in the Bevilacqua family could have dated back to 1499.
Scrambling to try and find the right entrance, my family and I hustled down alleyways and across canals. Finally we arrived at our destination. I looked around, confused. Were we in the right place? Before me stood a shorter than average door, on a completely unassuming wall. Surely this humble entrance wasn’t home to the most prestigious textile in Venice? Nevertheless, this was the correct address, so we proceeded and rang the doorbell. Our tour-guide-to-be opened the door and beckoned us in.
My eyes widened.
Past the initial hallway, lined with plaques and certificates, was an enormous room, the size of our entire apartment. There stood seven or eight looms, all more than twice my height. Each loom boasted a brilliant patterned velvet, with intricate patterns I couldn’t hope to draw, let alone weave.
Our tour guide explained to us the complexities of the art while we walked down the room. She explained that every pattern had an extensive length of punch cards, meters upon meters coiled up on top of the looms.
To make the punch cards move, the weaver must repeatedly step up and down on a pedal, thus spinning a wheel that moves the cards along. The noise was quite loud, as all of the wood was slamming against other wood and making a racket.
Our guide then told us how the velvet texture is created. She said that once a line of stitches is completed, the weaver rips the string loose using a long thin metal rod (it looked like a kebab skewer). Due to this step the process is super slow and laborious, each day only producing about 35-40 cm of their unique fabric. This means that a given pattern can take 1 to 2 months to complete.
Coupled with this, these machines are ancient, meaning that they often jam and break down, requiring the weaver to climb on top of the machine and fixing it, as I witnessed. As their website explains, there is no music in the weaving room, as it will make it too difficult for the weavers to hear for when the machine jams or breaks, as sight isn’t everything.
Perhaps what interested me the most was the sheer amount of time it took to learn the skills required to weave. This was a practice that had lasted for centuries, each generation working at the same business. This room had so much significance, decades, even centuries of work inside this building. I thought back to the door, and how humbly it stood.
A small door to an ancient world.
