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Two centuries ago, Luigi Bevilacqua set up his weaving-shop on the San Lorenzo quay in the Venice district of Castello. Since then, using the same techniques, the same materials and those original eighteenth-century looms, the expert hands of the company's weavers have continued to transform precious natural fibres into soprarizzi velvets, brocades, lampasses, damasks and satins for use in the decor of palaces, homes and theatres throughout the world.That original weaving-shop developed quickly, and in a few years Luigi was joined in his business by his sons Vincenzo, Antonio, Angelo and Cesare.

Following a fire, the company was forced to move its offices and workshops to the seventeenth-century Palazzo Labia. The choice of such a prestigious building reveals how solidly established the business had become, but it was also the result of a clear consideration of logistics: Palazzo Labia is at a key strategic point on the route that tourists and visitors must take from the railway station to St. Mark's Square.With the beginning of the new century, the company - which had in the meantime moved to what would become its permanent premises, in the district of Santa Croce - had grown even more, and was now employing more than 100 people to work some 50 manual looms producing metres and metres of worked and smooth velvet, brocades, damasks and lampasses - together with a whole range of braiding, tassels, fringes and other articles of haberdashery.The period from the end of the First World War through the 1920s was crucial in the growth of the company, with Bevilacqua taking important steps to expand its foreign trade - particularly in Sweden, as a result of Cesare's marriage to the Swedish countess Glenny Charlotte von Redlich. At the end of the 1920s Luigi Bevilacqua Ltd was set up, a shareholding company managed by Cesare and Angelo Bevilacqua. The manufacturing side of the business now rested on a solid productive structure, whilst sales were good and foreign trade links were extended even further, especially in the United States. At the same time, the company began to establish business contacts with the Middle East, which would soon become one of its most important markets. In 1961 management of the company was taken over by Cesare's son, Giulio, who had already been working in the business for years and continued to run things up until very recently, when he was succeeded by his sons Rodolfo and Alberto and his nephew Mario, the son of Emanuele Bevilacqua.

So experience and traditions have been passed down from one generation of the family to the next. And the result of this unbroken continuation of tradition, this constant dedication to their craft, is that the company is still using the original techniques of sixteenth-century Venice in the production of its fabrics, maintaining the craft of weaving as it was in its very heyday.