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STROLLING ALONG VENICE’S wide southern promenade of the Zattere and peering out over the choppy vaporetto-dotted water, the island of Giudecca spreads across the Venetian Lagoon. Along the island’s waterfront stand churches (one, a Palladian masterpiece, was built to celebrate the end of the Black Plague), tiny trattorias, and a few boutique hotels. But the most curious and eye-catching building is the giant, faded-brick rectangle at its western end, a factory emblazoned at the crown with white capital letters spelling out FORTUNY. For lovers of design and Venetian history, that name possesses a near-mythic status conjuring decadent beauty and modern invention. Fortuny is Venice’s premier fabric company, begun by the genius polymath (artist, inventor, light technician, photographer, and designer) Mariano Fortuny, who built and opened the Giudecca workshop in 1922 to house his secret printing methods and specially designed machinery for producing miraculous, handcrafted damask-like patterns on bolts of white cotton.

This year, the company celebrates the centennial of that first running of its printing press with a series of backward glances and forward-looking ambitions. One hundred years may not seem like a long time in a city founded in 697, one that can claim to be the longest-lasting independent republic. But any contemporary visitor is acquainted with the fragile nature of this artistic capital — increasingly, local businesses and artisans have been pushed off the islands and onto the mainland in favor of tourist shops and cheaper, foreign goods. A majority of the city’s souvenirs — and even some of its “authentic” luxury products — are mass-produced far beyond the Veneto region. Consider this fact: Fortuny’s Giudecca compound is the only working factory left in Venice. In its way, its upholstery fabrics are as fundamentally Venetian as Murano glass.

On offer concurrently with the maestro’s original motifs, the 2022 Fortuny collection features brand-new Venice-themed designs: fabric patterns based on the waves of the Venetian Lagoon, on the moody clouds that congregate over the medieval city, and on islands around the globe that have significance to the company. Currently, there are 88 patterns in stock, and when considering the range of color variations of each pattern, there are 366 fabrics on offer. Essentially, though, each individual meter of fabric — consisting of up to 15 different “lays” of dye (think of the way watercolors mix together on paper) — is its own one-of-a-kind work of art. In all of its history, the factory only closed twice, for World War II and due to Covid-19. The great Fortuny spent that first closure locked away in his palazzo studio creating a dizzying number of patterns that couldn’t, at the time, be realized. That means the company’s archive is stocked with never-before-seen Fortuny treasures waiting for development.

But the company isn’t only subsumed with its history and past. The person largely responsible for the task of seeing the brand into the future is Venetian architect Alberto Torsello. Torsello possessed such an implicit understanding of the house that the Riad brothers asked him to serve as artistic director. Amazingly, Torsello grew up in a house right across the canal from the factory (his mother still lives there), and its giant signage served as his childhood backdrop. The celebrated local architect, who is responsible for such large-scale projects as the restoration of the Doge’s Palace and the Royal Gardens in San Marco, was commissioned to redesign the Fortuny private showroom at the front of the Giudecca compound. Torsello transformed the formerly dim-lit, musty salesroom into a sleek, light-filled theater with pull-down scrims to display the fabric samples. The new showroom opened last year.

Torsello takes a philosophical approach to the company credo. “All Fortuny productions are born from the notion of light,” he says. He sees light as the tissue that connects the intrepid theater inventions; the use of pleats in his famous dresses, which capture and hold light like the grooves in an ionic column; and, of course, the optical illusion of volume and texture in the bold fabric patterns. He defines the house’s mission as opposite from the goals of other textile companies, which aim to produce in bulk and sell as much material as possible. “The quality of our fabrics depends on time and knowledge,” he says. “Time is the real luxury — time to think, to live, to project, to create.” Torsello isn’t interested in barreling ahead with an array of quick merchandise for a hungry design market. One immediate objective is to reintroduce the brand’s beauty and history to a new audience. “Maintaining the quality and value is most important. We have a lot of work ahead.”

This September, Fortuny will launch a special centennial collection of fabrics to honor its 100-year perch on the Giudecca shores. For now, the exact nature of these patterns remains, like so much in the company, a well-guarded secret. Still, universal appreciation for this last Venice factory has never been stronger. While the fabrics are primarily used for interior decor — wall coverings, furniture upholsteries, and pillow shams — in recent years fashion brands such as Valentino and Rick Owens have incorporated the designs into their own collections. For lovers of Venice, a thriving, newly energized Fortuny spells good news for the city’s fragile artistic ecosystem. Perhaps as the fish, birds, and dolphins came back to the Grand Canal during Covid’s break in mass tourism, so too can the artisans, who, for centuries, made Venice the epicenter of the creative world. Pray to Fortuny, secular patron saint of invention and staying power.