make your fridays matter with a well-read weekend

make your fridays matter

Fornasetti juxtaposes traditional craft with art for Fuorisalone 2023
‘The syntax of making’ by Fornasetti
Image: Courtesy of Fornasetti
4
News

Fornasetti juxtaposes traditional craft with art for Fuorisalone 2023

The syntax of making by Fornasetti showcases three new furniture and accessory collections that exude the brand's craftsmanship at Milan Design Week 2023.

by STIRpad
Published on : Apr 19, 2023

Traditional craft techniques blended with an unmistakable artistic language construct Fornasetti’s presentation at the Milan Design Week 2023, touted The syntax of making. The showcase will unveil three new collections of furniture design and accessories for the home, characterised by new forms and three different decorations, expressing the atelier's unique savoir-faire.

Furnishing accessories and porcelain complement the wooden furniture, enabling a few small rudiments to transfigure any corner of the home into an exemplification of personality and elegance. The wooden cabinets and bedside tables are segregated by compact confines and new shapes, their numerous sides forming a prism on which the colours and silvery reflections of the decorations stand out, nearly like the surface of a precious stone. The new console tables, with their more rigorous and essential lines, are each fitted with a drawer that makes them handy for storage, without immolating their elegance.

Mirrors are objects dear to Fornasetti due to their peculiar curved form, which has the power to hypnotise anyone reflected with its optical effect. In the new collections, the surfaces of the mirrors are presented both in their classic, convex interpretation and in a variant with bubbles, further accentuating the playful distortion of reality. The trays, available in metal, wood and porcelain, play host to new decorations like artist's canvases, while the lamp designs , available in different shapes and sizes, are ready to illuminate the various corners of the home with their soft light.

The three decorations

Giro di Conchiglie

This marine-themed design installation draws inspiration from one of the rooms of the manor in Varenna, an abode formerly owned by the Fornasetti family on Lake Como, recognised as one of the ultimate decorative expressions of Fornasetti's language. Piero Fornasetti devoted himself tirelessly throughout his career to designing the spaces of the manor, from whole rooms down to tiny details. One of the rooms was entirely adorned with a marine theme, with real shells covering the walls, furniture and chandelier. In the Giro di Conchiglie collection, the three-dimensionality of the design arises from the play of light of silver, applied manually in leaves by the Atelier's craftsmen. The striking trompe l'oeil of the shells is accentuated by the blue background, created using a special painting technique with a dripping effect.

Giardino Settecentesco

The decoration pays homage to one of the bedrooms of the manor in Varenna, characterised by the yellow of the walls, that formed the backdrop to two pieces of furniture, decorated by Piero Fornasetti, especially for this space in 1954. Characterised by its fantastic geographies and structures Giardino Settecentesco is crafted in the neoclassical style, that coexists in a world where nature merges with architecture, whimsical with perfection. Made in three different colour variants, in tones of blue, green and yellow, this decoration transports the viewer to a mysterious world through its playful reflections and perspective effects.

Musciarabia con rose

The Musciarabia con rose decoration celebrates the Atelier's passion for meticulous figures and black lines that intersect with the shapes and silhouettes of the new creations. The presence of precisely hand-painted pastel pink flowers softens the differing interplay between white and black—a skilful emulsion of the rationality of geometric design and poetry of the natural world.

Each of Fornasetti’s new creations highlights the expert craftsmanship behind them, the result of a careful eye for detail and a slow crafting process, bringing to life pieces that have given the atelier its personality, since its inception. "The value of making things by hand has acquired a deep meaning for me over time. It goes beyond technique and the desire to preserve a firm and coherent identity. It is a choice and a way of being today, in our modern world, an ethical line that puts people and what they make at the centre of everything. Craftsmanship is a conscious way of working, fuelled by dynamic creativity, which embodies the extraordinary capacity to combine abstract knowledge and experience continuously: what I like to call thinking with the hands," shares Barnaba Fornasetti , Fornasetti’s artistic director.

STIR’s coverage of Milan Design Week 2023 showcases the best exhibitions, studios, designers, installations, brands, and special projects to look out for. Explore Euroluce 2023 and all the design districts—5Vie Art and Design, Brera Design District, Fuorisalone, Isola Design District, Tortona District, and Milano Design District—with us.

Text by Ria Jha

What do you think?

Comments Added Successfully!