Navata Fabric

NAVATA takes its six-medallion pattern from the marble ornament of I Gesuiti, the church of Santa Maria Assunta in Venice (built 1715–1729), whose white-and-green Baroque stonework is one of the most ingenious feats of decorative craftsmanship in the city's history. Between 1725 and 1731, the church's walls, floors, and pillars were sheathed in inlaid white-and-green marble worked to imitate the damask and silk wall-hangings then in vogue in Venice — stone made to pass for fabric. The conceit reaches its height in the pulpit carved by Francesco Bonazza, where marble falls in soft drapery as though a curtain had been hung and then turned to stone, a material paradox that sits at the heart of what SECTILE 1729 does as a collection. NAVATA translates that logic into a large-scale printed cotton: a pattern that carries architectural scale and Baroque ornamental richness. It is a Venetian fabric in the most literal sense — produced in Venice, from Venice, about Venice. Produced in collaboration with Venetian Heritage.