Ancient Memories: reweaving time with sustainable fabric stories
Presented at Milan Design Week 2025, Ancient Memories is an immersive textile exhibition by Fischbacher 1819 that explores the emotional and material depth of fabric.
In a design world often swept up by what’s next, Fischbacher 1819 takes a deliberate pause. With Ancient Memories, the Swiss heritage brand charts a quieter course—one that listens to materials, honors imperfections, and treats memory as a design principle. This isn’t just a collection. It’s a textile manifesto.
The project, now in its second chapter, is a collaboration between design icon Marcel Wanders, textile artist Caterina Roppo, and the brand’s creative director Camilla D. Fischbacher. Together, they’ve crafted a series of materials that don’t just look beautiful—they tell stories. Stories spun from hemp, jute, recycled cotton, and time itself.
Material memory
At the heart of Ancient Memories is a reverence for craft and slowness. Hemp, one of humanity’s oldest fibers, becomes a symbolic anchor—a nod to pre-industrial knowledge and a response to the hyper-consumption of contemporary design. From this foundation, new materials emerge, rich with tactile history.
Take Animalia Echo, a flat-weave rug where undyed jute and wool evoke ancient stone engravings. Or Puffy Loom, where soft knots and rough textures collide in a woven language of contrast. Then there’s Animalia Traces, a tufted piece made of silky Tencel, hiding the initials of its creators in its graphic, primal motif. These aren’t just rugs. They’re artifacts.
Imperfection as identity
The collection’s textiles speak the same language—rough, raw, and deeply personal. Sacred Bark and Eco Saga blend jute warps with recycled cotton wefts, building textures that feel like bark, earth, memory. Nature’s Canvas carries a vintage fade, changing slightly with every cut. And Animalia Genealogy, a jacquard trim of imagined animals, feels like something unearthed from an ancient myth.
There’s a clear message here: perfection is overrated. Variation is value. Time is a collaborator.
A space that speaks
In Milan, the Fischbacher 1819 showroom becomes a living archive. Rugs and textiles are set against vintage furniture and works from international designers. It’s not just a product display—it’s a spatial narrative. An emotional landscape.
Textile artist Caterina Roppo deepens the dialogue with “Everybody has pain somewhere,” a solo exhibition that explores the layering of time through matter. A video installation by Rashed Qurwash adds yet another voice to this rich, multidisciplinary conversation.
Ancient Memories: designing for the long now
At its core, Ancient Memories isn’t about nostalgia. It’s about resilience. It’s a call to rethink our relationship with materials—not as trends, but as legacies. Fischbacher 1819 is showing us that sustainable design isn’t about doing less harm. It’s about doing more with meaning. Because in a world obsessed with what’s new, maybe it’s time we remember what lasts.
About Fischbacher 1819
Fischbacher 1819 is a Swiss textile house with a legacy as rich as its fabrics. For over 200 years, the brand has crafted luxury textiles, rugs, and wall coverings for both private interiors and public spaces—each collection shaped by a deep commitment to craftsmanship, creativity, and material excellence. Still family-run after more than two centuries, the company is now led by the sixth generation: Michael Fischbacher, CEO, and Camilla Douraghy Fischbacher, Creative Director. Together, they carry forward the vision and values of their ancestors, infusing tradition with contemporary sensibility.
