Beautiful, sustainable, and for Venice: craftsmanship. Join us in discovering artisan workshops, including art printing houses, graphic studios, bookstores, and laboratories.
We have created a guide to discovering artisan workshops, a walk with Venezia da Vivere, ahead of the next edition of Atelier Aperti, from October 19 to 24, as part of Radar Venezia, an event on fashion, craftsmanship, and the creative city presented by Venice Fashion Week.
Atelier Aperti is the project conceived and organized by Venezia da Vivere to promote high craftsmanship and artistic trades, introduce artisans in their workplaces, and inspire new generations.
With free access or by reservation, the ateliers open to the public with workshops, talks, guided tours, live demonstrations, and laboratories with the creators, who are present to talk about materials, techniques, and processes.
For ten years, twice a year, in spring and in autumn, we have presented a program of free walks, meetings, workshops, and aperitifs to discover artisan workshops.
Atelier Aperti is part of the official program of the National Made in Italy Day established by the Ministry of Enterprises and Made in Italy.
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Welcome to the Venetian ateliers!
Small Caps
An atelier/workshop/art gallery that is a graphic design studio combining visual communication and passionate creativity. They know how to tell a story about a project, an event, a place with a single image. Ironic and poetic, their creations are small colorful haikus that enchant.
The unmistakable signature posters are printed as screen prints and reproduced in limited editions in a space always open to everyone, dotted with cards, nibs, printing matrices, color proofs, and emotional objects.
Old-school graphic designers who know how to combine digital and handmade skills, they have a cult following for typography, writing, letterforms, letterpress printing, and calligraphy.
Small Caps – Dorsoduro, Campo Santa Margherita, Dorsoduro 2916
Tel. +39 340 6461841 +39 339 5326700
hola@smallcaps.it
www.smallcaps.it
Instagram and Facebook
Lunardelli Venezia
Wood supports Venice, marks the waterways throughout the lagoon, offers mooring for boats, and is the raw material of the Serenissima’s great seafaring vocation. Hidden in the foundations of calli and palaces, wood is alive and is the ideal companion for a journey in search of the perfect form.
Lunardelli Venezia is the design project of Lunardelli est. 1967, a historic company specialized in woodworking, where Angelo Lunardelli developed his expertise in palaces of great historical value.
The brand created in Venice, led by Agnese and Sebastiano Lunardelli, produces design objects that express the soul of the city and the high quality of Italian craftsmanship, within an evolved technological and market context.
Historical know-how combines wood with other noble materials, while the tradition of the highest quality craftsmanship is reinterpreted by the contemporary approach of designers and master artisans called upon to experiment with digital technologies and with particular attention to sustainability.
Lunardelli Venezia – Santa Croce, Calle Seconda del Cristo 2210a
Tel. +39 0421 67222
info@lunardellivenezia.net
lunardellivenezia.net
Instagram and Facebook
Grafiche Ellemme
Grafiche Ellemme is one of the most beloved Venetian art printing houses in the city, continuing the tradition of Aldo Manuzio and using traditional Heidelberg printing presses for posters, letterheads, postcards, ex libris, and other wonderful paper creations.
Created by Michele Costantini and Luca Valonta, artists and master printers, the Venezia Stampa project promotes local painters and artists. For their strength in the face of the damage suffered on November 12 with the Acqua Granda, the exceptional tide that invaded the city, their workshop has become a symbol of resilience.
Grafiche Ellemme – Santa Croce, Campo Santa Maria Mater Domini 2173
Tel. +39 041 715455
Venezia Stampa
Instagram and Facebook
DoppioFondo
A cultural artistic association founded in 2014 in Venice created DoppioFondo, an art printing workshop and independent publishing house. Within the association, a collective of creatives organizes workshops, artist residencies, and artistic projects, and offers its members the opportunity to share the workshop and equipment.
DoppioFondo – Santa Croce, Lista vecchia dei Bari 1256
Vanessa Milan 0039.3402776813
Tiziano Ciao 0039.3204835358
doppiofondofondo@gmail.com
www.doppiofondo.org
Instagram and Facebook
Le Fórcole
One of the artisan activities essential to the life of Venice since its origins is that of the remèr: oar makers have always been indispensable to the daily life of a city born on water. The oar, to move on water, rests on the fórcola, which transforms from a working object into an admirable sculpture of a thousand forms.
Fórcola makers and remèri, guardians of this ancient art, are Saverio Pastor, Giuseppe Carli, the king of fórcole, and Gino Fossetta, the wizard of oars. Each piece is unique and every object is made with the customer in mind: through their work and their workshop Le fórcole keeps alive the traditions they inherited from the masters.
Le Fórcole – Dorsoduro, Fondamenta Soranzo 341 (near the Zattere and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection)
Tel. 041 5225699
savepastor@libero.it
www.forcole.com
Fallani Venezia
Industrial spaces in Venice are magical, their walls telling the story of the city’s artisan past. At Fondamente Nuove is the artistic screen printing workshop Fallani, created in 1968 by Fiorenzo Fallani. Screen printing—from the Latin “seri” (silk) and the Greek “gràphein” (to write)—consists of passing color through the mesh of a fabric, printing on any material and with any ink. This great expressive versatility made it a technique particularly suited to pop art.
In 1970 Fiorenzo directed the Experimental Laboratory of the Italian Pavilion at the XXXV Venice Art Biennale and from 1978 held the chair of Screen Printing at the Venice Academy of Fine Arts, where he taught until 1992. Since then, for dozens of international artists, his workshop has been the place to experiment with new directions, and Fiorenzo Fallani and his son Gianpaolo the ideal interpreters with whom to engage.
Chronicles from a Submerged City is an initiative born from the idea of Andrea Da Villa and Chiara Masiero Sgrinzatto to support the activity after the high tide of November 12, 2019.
Important illustrators such as Bruno Bozzetto, Ale Giorgini, Riccardo Guasco, Franco Matticchio, Andy Rementer, Jacopo Rosati, Guido Scarabottolo, Lucio Schiavon, and Olimpia Zagnoli created and donated graphics connected to the city of Venice.
The graphics are available for pre-order on fallanivenezia.bigcartel.com in a limited edition of 50 copies, numbered and signed by the artists, available individually or as a portfolio. The two screen printing photos are by Laila Pozzo and Stefano Maniero.
Fallani Venezia – Cannaregio 5001/A
Tel. +39 335 5851689
info@fallanivenezia.com
www.fallanivenezia.com
Instagram and Facebook
Il Forcolaio Matto
After studying Astronomy, Piero Dri began frequenting the workshop of Paolo Brandolisio, a skilled master remèr and former student of the great Giuseppe Carli, committed to rediscovering an ancient craft and feeling proud to be Venetian. The fourth and youngest remèr in Venice, in 2013 he opened his workshop and produces oars and fórcole for the nearby gondoliers of S. Sofia, for regatta rowers, and for the city’s rowing clubs.
Piero proposes rowing as an alternative way to see and experience the city of Venice. A healthy, intelligent, and low-cost way to get around and discover the secrets and most hidden corners of the city.
Il Forcolaio Matto – Cannaregio, Ramo dell’Oca 4231
Tel. +39 041 8778823
info@ilforcolaiomatto.it
www.ilforcolaiomatto.it
Instagram and Facebook
Plum Plum Creations
Arianna is a Venetian girl who preserves the ancient art of printing in Venice in her art studio, where you can find chalcographic engravings, drypoints, linocuts, watercolors, and drawings. Venice is her source of inspiration and she would like everyone to know that craftsmanship in Venice is alive and thriving more than ever.
To the great pleasure of participants and supporters, Arianna organizes printing demonstrations in her welcoming atelier.
Plum plum creations – Fondamenta dei Ormesini – Cannaregio 2681
Tel. +39 041 4765404
info@plumplumcreations.com
www.plumplumcreations.com
Instagram and Facebook
Mario Berta Battiloro
The working of gold leaf is an ancient art that came to the lagoon from Byzantium. Gold is worked with heavy hammers with approximately 30,000 hammer blows. Only if the beating is done by hand is the gold atom not modified, and thus after approximately eight hours of work, gold leaf is obtained.
Master Marino Menegazzo, the last battiloro of the lagoon, carried forward the ancient family trade started back in 1926 until 2025.
We celebrate the precious 99 years of gold leaf and art projects, which have seen the Berta Menegazzo family alongside artists, creatives, and companies.
Even though the historic artisan workshop is now closed, gold leaf in Venice continues to live on in many Venetian workshops.
www.berta-battiloro.com
Instagram
And to conclude the walk? Let’s go to SullaLuna
Sulla Luna Libreria Bistrot
Along the Fondamenta della Misericordia stands Sulla Luna: independent bookshop and bistrot. On grandmother’s tables, scholars, readers, and children, comics, illustrated books, graphic novels, cookbooks, and many children’s books. At the counter, organic cakes and biscuits, teas and infusions, vegan dishes, natural wines, and the prosecco Lunatico produced at their winery. Creative workshops for children are scheduled.
SullaLuna Venezia – Cannaregio, Fondamenta della Misericordia 2535
Tel. +39 041 722924
Instagram and Facebook
Article by Laura Scarpa. The first photo of SullaLuna is courtesy of Nicoletta Fornaro, an excellent Venetian food blogger and photographer. The cover photo, Lunardelli, is by Laura Scarpa.
