Fortuny, we bring you the fabric factory: the house and the secret garden on the island of Giudecca
The building that was the home of the Countess Gozzi, next to the historic factory of the famous printed fabrics, open every day for the Biennial Architecture. A path of design and art in collaboration with Chahan
Venice – A factory surrounded by greenery, with the roses that climb on the red brick walls; A lush garden that, surprisingly, includes a swimming pool with its small decandance for the changing rooms. And then the old villa, a three -story building now transformed into showroomwhich however still retains the atmosphere of a house: the bedrooms, the kitchen, the living rooms, the salons with breathtaking views of the Skyline of Venice and a terrace overlooking the green of the back.
This is Fortuny, on the island of Giudecca, where the famous printed fabrics are still produced today. Built on the ground of an ancient convent, the factory has been guarding its secrets for more than a century: the windows are shielded by thick tents, and internal mechanisms, by the will of the founder Mariano Fortuny, have never been revealed. The techniques for creating iconic tissues remain handed down only within the atelier, such as in A modern Renaissance shop.
Although the production remains invisible, the home home and the gardens of the historic property are now open to visitors every day during the 2025 architecture biennial. Just play the bell of the black wrought iron gate overlooking the island’s road to access one of the most fascinating and hidden places in the lagoon. In all other periods, access is possible by reservation.
The Fortuny building was the home of Elsie McNeill Lee, an exclusive distributor for America and then heir of the company, which became Countess Gozzi after the wedding with Alvise Gozzi. It was she, in 1949, who transformed the building into residence and private garden, next to the factory where it all started thirty years earlier. In 1919, in fact, Mariano Fortuny had purchased the property from Gian Carlo Stucky and had installed a cottonary factory printed for the furnishings that imitated the silk jouts. A brilliant intuition: raise a poor material such as noble and refined fabric cotton, with unprecedented commercial success.
Fortuny, born in Granada in 1871 and moved to Venice as a child, was an artist and inventor, alchemist of color and light. He created pigments, machines, clothes and scenography. He conceived the famous Delphos dress, loved by free and revolutionary women like Isadora Duncan and Eleonora Duse. Patented more than twenty inventions, including A « dimmer » for the theater and even a nautical helium. His work developed between art, technology and science, with inspirations that ranged from Persia to Japan, from Egypt to Florence.
After his death, his wife Henriette sold the company to the young Elsie, For a strange coincidence that remained a widows not far away, right before a trip to Venice. And precisely in those rooms, which remained closed for almost thirty years, the brothers Maury and Mickey Riad, today at the helm of Fortuny, wanted to report life and vision. With them, Chahan Minassian, Franco-Libyan designer with deep Venetian roots, took care of the second consecutive year a reinterpretation of spaces and material, mixing the Fortuny fabrics with furnishings, unique pieces, glass, rugs and collectible works in A galler house where everything is on sale.
« As Elsie met Fortuny and learned and progressed from that story, so we do today: we are wagons of a train, » said Minassian, who met the name Fortuny studying in Venice. But it was in the 80s, when he was creative director of Ralph Lauren Home, who understood his scope: « In New York a Luxury without Fortuny was not designed, » he recalls.
Today, precisely in the heart of the place where everything has started, the vision is renewed: not a museum, such as the one hosted in Venice in the palace donated by the widow Henriette to the city, but a lived house and a beauty to be observed, touching, feeling. And, for those who want, even to buy: The shop next to the building are on sale cuts of fabric, cushions, coated frames and other objects, Even umbrellas (they cost almost 800 euros each) to let Venice enter – and Fortuny – in their homes.
