The story of Veneziani Yachting began in Trieste in 1863, when Gioachino Veneziani founded the underwater paints and coatings company that bore his name.

It all started with a “coating for the protection of ship hulls”, developed by Giuseppe Moravia and entrusted to his son-in-law Gioachino. The product proved effective from the outset and success soon followed. The company grew and expanded its presence, first to Murano and then to Cologne, beginning to look beyond Italy’s borders.

This is where an unexpected figure enters the story: Ettore Schmitz, better known to the world as Italo Svevo.

After marrying Livia, Gioachino Veneziani’s daughter, Svevo joined the family business. And while today his name is mainly associated with literature, his role at Veneziani at the time was far from marginal.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Veneziani antifouling paints were becoming known well beyond Trieste, and Svevo personally contributed to this expansion. In 1903, he took part in opening the company’s English site in Charlton, near London, helping Veneziani enter one of the world’s most important maritime markets and become a supplier to the Royal Navy.

For Svevo, this marked the beginning of years of travel between Trieste, Murano and London, combining production and business development. And it was his work that led to one of the most curious connections in this story: to improve his English, he turned to a private tutor, James Joyce. Those lessons marked the beginning of a friendship that would later cross paths with his literary career.

From Trieste to London, Veneziani built an increasingly international presence over the years — a journey that continues today through a commercial network extending across Italy and numerous countries abroad. Italo Svevo’s role in this expansion remains one of the lesser-known yet most fascinating chapters in Veneziani’s history, where business and literature came together in a completely unexpected way.