The Rose Unite textile archive was established in London in 1985 by Massimo Pezzati, a textile designer fascinated by the variety and exceptional nature of textile art. The archive is now located in Maslianico, near Como, a town whose textile industry has ancient and illustrious origins. The archive is managed by his sister Marta, who inherited from Massimo a passion for the pursuit of beauty, as she has continued to add to the Rose Unite collections.
The archive is representative of the entire international textile scene with more than 300,000 samples from the 18th century through to the 1980s, including samples from all sectors, including clothing, furnishings and ties, with thousands of printed fabrics, jacquards and original designs on paper. There is also lace and embroidery, as well as shawls and scarves, ethnic textiles, vintage books and documents and vintage garments that further enrich the collection.
Open to visitors who make a reservation, the Rose Unite archive can be consulted for research and by companies and designers seeking inspiration their latest fashion collections. The vast size and heterogeneity of the archive makes it a treasury for new ideas re-emerging from the past, when quality was the watchword and craftsmanship assured excellence and elegance. All this is ripe for reinterpretation according to today's tastes and style.
Rose Unite is housed in the former headquarters of the Cartiere Burgo paper mills, which after their foundation experienced a period of exponential growth, becoming a major player in paper industry in Italy as early as 1918. The industrial building has been now converted into a co-working space that, in addition to being the home of the Rose Unite collections, hosts artists' and architects’ studios, where creativity, history and Italian cultural heritage meet and interact.