Ca' Macana

Ca' Macana has made papier-mache masks in Venice since 1984, working from a workshop at Dorsoduro 3215. Every mask is formed by hand from a gesso mould, so each one carries the hand of the artisan who made it. The decoration draws on fabrics and feathers, Swarovski crystals and gold or silver leaf. Classic Venetian forms such as the bauta and the moretta are reproduced from paintings by Pietro Longhi and Francesco Guardi. Drawings by Giovanni Grevembroch supply further models. The workshop holds a full set of Commedia dell'Arte characters from the harlequin to the colombina. Contemporary designs are made with the same techniques. The masks have appeared in Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut and in Fifty Shades of Grey. They have also dressed productions at the Vienna Opera and fashion photography for Vogue Japan. Alongside the shop the workshop teaches. Decoration courses and a mask-making course are open to visitors, along with family workshops. Mini-lectures cover the history of the bauta and the plague doctor mask, and workshop visits are arranged for tour groups and company outings. The site also publishes a guide to buying masks in Venice. It warns that industrial imitations have crowded out authentic pieces since the 1980s and explains how to tell a handmade Venetian mask from a copy.