Silvia Paulon Moreno talks biennale routines, a new Abu Dhabi project, and the quiet corners of her city.
Silvia Paulon Moreno, founder of Dellaluna, recently sat down with Whitewall to talk about Venice, her studio rituals, and a collaboration with the Louvre Abu Dhabi. The conversation landed somewhere between insider geography and process note.
Dellaluna, a Venice-based design house known for small-run objects and textile work, has spent the last year working with the museum on a capsule tied to its permanent collection. Details are still held close, but Moreno mentioned the project pulls from archival textiles in the museum's Islamic art wing. A soft launch is expected later this spring.
The Venice angle is the sharper beat here. Moreno described her biennale routine: mornings at the Giardini before crowds, afternoons at the Arsenale when light shifts, evenings at smaller pavilions most visitors skip. She named the Estonian and Nordic pavilions as consistent favorites. The pattern reads as a local's edit, not a press-pass circuit.
On hidden Venice, she pointed to Campo San Giacomo dell'Orio in Santa Croce, a square she described as unchanged in twenty years. She also mentioned a bookshop near the Rialto, Libreria Acqua Alta, though that one is less hidden than it used to be. The through-line: places that hold a pace opposite to the tourist corridor.
The studio itself, based in Dorsoduro, operates on a small scale. Moreno said most pieces are made in-house or with a single Venice-based weaver she's worked with for a decade. The Louvre project is an exception, requiring external fabrication in the UAE to meet the museum's technical specs.
The piece is light on product detail but heavy on place. That balance works here. Dellaluna isn't a house you track by release calendar. It's a studio you notice when someone you know has one of their pieces on a shelf.
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