Palazzo Baccin, ex Zanolli-Sebellin-Zarpellon factory

The palazzo was erected at the end of the 1700’s by the ceramicist and entrepreneur Giovanni Maria Baccin who, thanks to a brillian career in the Antonibon factory, had been able to accumulate considerable assets, sufficient to purchase houses, lands, farms, hydraulic factories, and a country villa, and to establish his own company for the production of earthenware.
What is currently known as Palazzo Baccin is only a part of the manor house inhabited by the family and a priest, “master here in my house of this school in Le Nove,” attended by the children of ceramicists in order to receive an education. The palazzo, now a Bibliomuseum, therefore housed, between the end of the 1700’s and the beginning of the 1800’s, the first school in Nove, which was privately launched and supported.

Towards the end of the 1800’s, following the transition between heirs, alienations and splitting of the property began, until the foundation of a company, in 1922, by three ceramicists of Nove: Teodoro Sebellin, Sebastiano Zanolli, and Alessandro Zarpellon. Their intentions were to establish their own factory and, attracted by the palazzo and its position, they undertook a series of acquisitions that allowed them to almost fully reunite the original building complex.

In 1923, the façade was embellished with a grandiose allegorical frieze made of painted and glazed earthenware, created by “Doro” Sebellin, and depicting a series of putti that play with geese and hold festoons composed of multicolored flowers and fruit. The work was meant to show off the professionalism of the factory, capable of guaranteeing reliability to future clients, like a big calling card. Each tile is different from the next, and modeled by hand according to a technique learned while assisting Prof. Luigi Fabris in the cladding of the façade of the Hungaria Hotel at the Lido of Venice.

The “fabbrica dei tosi” (“youngsters’ factory”), so called because of the young age of the three entrepreneurs, produced artistic and modern ceramics, ranging from Baroque to Art Nouveau and Art Deco motifs. The production of humorous humanized dogs and figurines inspired by the Alps, dressed in traditional European costumes, or inspired by contemporary female fashion were identifying products of the factory. In the second half of the 1950’s, it experienced a newfound splendor thanks to the collaboration with various designers, winning the Palladio Prize in 1962 and 1973 alongside Pompeo Pianezzola.