of everything,
flowers bloom
flowers bloom
Pagliani & Brasseur,
a family history
In the early 1900’s, Giuditta Brasseur is a orphan who spends her childhood and early years in the “Collegio delle Figlie dei Militari di Torino” (College for Daughters of the Military in Turin) where she earns her diploma as a commercial accountant.
During those years, a French high level school teacher tutors students in the art of reproducing garden flowers using fabric, both for interior decoration as well as to embellish hats and clothing.
A school subject at the time quite popular in colleges.
Giuditta learns the art of creating textile flowers; she cuts cloth petals with scissors using shapes obtained from all kinds of materials, nowadays still stored in the company archives.
She subsequently shapes the petals through heat, a processing technique that has remained unchanged in time.
She creates flowers, buds, crowns, shoots: the perfume and radiance of spring envelop the room where she works.
A passion that will quickly become her profession, thanks to her encounter with Giobatta Pagliani who, a few months later, will become her husband.
Giuditta and Giobatta move to Verona, and in 1946, during the difficult years following the war, give birth near Verona’s Roman Theatre, to one of the city’s most evocative places, the “Artisan Workshop Pagliani & Brasseur for the production of fabric artificial flowers, for clothing and for interior decoration”.
The reins of this new activity are not only in Giuditta Brasseur’s hands but also in Giobatta Pagliani’s, painter and sculptor, an essential presence for the development of this adventure.
The artist’s hands shape the clay to create moulds which, cast in bronze, will be essential to reproduce with utmost precision the petals and leaves of each flower which will subsequently be produced in fabric.
Their daughter Luciana will join the couple’s business at a very young age and soon Pagliani & Brasseur’s flowers will be appreciated and purchased by all the best shops in Italy.
In 1958 Luciana marries Luigi Tosi and becomes mother of four.
A passion that will quickly become her profession, thanks to her encounter with Giobatta Pagliani who, a few months later, will become her husband.
Giuditta and Giobatta move to Verona, and in 1946, during the difficult years following the war, give birth near Verona’s Roman Theatre, to one of the city’s most evocative places, the “Artisan Workshop Pagliani & Brasseur for the production of fabric artificial flowers, for clothing and for interior decoration”.
The reins of this new activity are not only in Giuditta Brasseur’s hands but also in Giobatta Pagliani’s, painter and sculptor, an essential presence for the development of this adventure.
The artist’s hands shape the clay to create moulds which, cast in bronze, will be essential to reproduce with utmost precision the petals and leaves of each flower which will subsequently be produced in fabric.
Their daughter Luciana will join the couple’s business at a very young age and soon Pagliani & Brasseur’s flowers will be appreciated and purchased by all the best shops in Italy.
In 1958 Luciana marries Luigi Tosi and becomes mother of four.
Running the family is demanding, but her passion for her job helps her to find time to follow the workshop’s activities.
The business grows and specializes in the production of flowers for interior decoration, bridal and other ceremonies with high quality and craftsmanship.
In 1964 home and workshop coexist in a large house in Verona, in via Catania.
A new chapter in the family history commences in 1982 when Anna, the third born, decides to give the business an innovative boost, and with her effervescent creativity, creates new and exclusive models whilst maintaining the refined production techniques bequeathed by her family.
The artisan workshop “Pagliani & Brasseur di Anna Tosi” is born, a breeding ground of all types of fabric flowers and accessories for haute-couture, from clothing to custom-made millinery, leather goods and interior decoration.
