Peter Marino Spins Watercolors of Italian Painter Tiepolo into New Rubelli Silk Line

Peter Marino's capsule collection for Rubelli, Rococo, is poetry in motion. An abstract interpretation of Peter's private collection of watercolor drawings by Italian painter and printmaker Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, the line comprises nine reversible silks, all produced in the Rubelli weaving mill in Como, Italy.

Sweep me off my feet, why don't ya!?

The line allows Peter to carry on with his “love affair”—as he dubs it—with his hometown of Venice, where he sits as the chairman of the Venetian Heritage Foundation. It’s where Rubelli had the chance to first meet him and, later on, invite him to design his first signature fabric collection with them.

Now on his third line, Peter manages to capture the light, playful, ornate style of Rococo painting even better than, well, Tiepolo did, if you ask me. Characterized by pastel colors, soft light, asymmetry, curving lines, and themes of love, romance, and mythology with leisure-filled pastoral scenes, the Rococo style emerged as a reaction to the heavy, dramatic Baroque period.

Peter nails it with these beauties, woven with gold and silver yarns to add an ethereal edge. Taking sections of the Tiepolo drawings that inspired him the most, Peter traces and transforms them into new abstract forms, helped along by the Rubelli style office, of course. First, they are enlarged, then broken down, and recomposed to achieve the sense of free-flowing movement across the textile. Colors like fiery oranges and yellows help it along, evolving into silvery-blue combinations, both of which seem to serve as the foundation for the palette built from them.

The result is fabrics that swirl, shimmer, and pretty much flirt with everyone in the room.

—AnnMarie Martin

Peter Marino