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![Floating through Fornasetti’s imagination, hot air balloons and flying machines trace whimsical routes across timeless design, from lamps and trays to umbrellas stands and wallpaper.
They first appeared in fabrics created for a Milanese private residence design by Gio Ponti in 1952.
Discover more via the link in bio.
#fornasetti fornasettiarchive #hothairballoons]()
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2025-09-20 22:36:12
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Floating through Fornas..
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![From sails to sketches: every voyage inspires new creations.
Explore a selection of Fornasetti’s nautical designs:
1. Tema e Variazioni no. 293: a voyage of invention on a paper boat
2. Barca a vela (Sailing boat) tray: a vintage-style open-sea illustration, 1950s
3. Colour model La Pesca: a set of eight porcelain coasters themed around fishing, where hooks, sinkers, and floats are elevated to tabletop decoration in true Fornasetti style
4. Regata velica scarf, 1946
5. Detail of Import Export cigarette Box, 1950s
6. Marinara Umbrella Stand: an orderly sequence of nautical tools turned into design
7. Tempera on paper, likely created during Piero Fornasetti’s voyage to Africa in the late 1930s
#fornasetti #fornasettiarchive]()
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2025-09-12 19:32:27
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From sails to sketche..
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![Piero Fornasetti was a devoted rider of two wheels, a passion reflected in his work and daily life.
Swipe through to discover how bicycles left their mark on his creations:
1-2. 1960s Multiplette décor, first designed for a paper basket, later chosen as decoration on his personal letterhead in the 1980s.
3. Archival photo of young Piero on his bicycle.
4. La velocipedie scarf, 1940s, inspired by 19th-century illustrations and detailed notes on historic bicycles.
5. Piero portrayed with a Fornasetti bicycle: a limited-edition series from the 1980s, recently reinterpreted by Barnaba.
6. Vintage advertising clippings collected by Piero and used to decorate a 1940s scarf.
#fornasetti #fornasettiarchive #bicycles]()
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2025-09-11 16:35:45
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Piero Fornasetti was a d..
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![Kings and Queens for sunlit days and untold stories.
A whimsical Fornasetti motif created for a special Piaggio commission, 1960s.
The second slide shows Piero Fornasetti’s original colour notes for the box design.
#fornasetti #fornasettiarchive]()
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2025-09-01 18:36:50
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Kings and Queens for su..
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![Where imagination plays by its own rules.
These vintage foulards reveal Fornasetti’s playful eye, where words and images blur the line between the real and the imagined. Rebus, dice, cards, and the goose game meet a surreal elegance.
A gallery of refined surprises, ready to unfold.
→ Swipe to discover them.
#fornasetti #fornasettiarchive]()
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2025-08-29 21:35:38
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Where imagination pla..
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![Before you leave, don’t forget the essentials.
Piero Fornasetti loved playing with words as much as with images, and this vintage foulard does both.
A refined reminder for summer escapes, and everyday rituals.
#Fornasetti #Fornasettiarchive]()
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2025-08-28 17:43:54
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Before you leave, don’t..
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![Surreal, ironic, visionary. This portrait of Piero in a butterfly-covered bathtub, placed unexpectedly in the Fornasetti garden, captures the essence of his creative spirit. A mindset that shaped not only his objects, but entire interiors.
From the family home in Varenna, decorated in the late 1950s and 1960s, emerges a world where decoration knows no boundaries. Every surface is a stage for imagination.
#fornasetti #fornasettiarchive]()
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2025-08-22 21:35:32
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Surreal, ironic, visionar..
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![From watermelons and orange slices to concentric compositions or more realistic fruit clusters, these hand-painted colour models reveal Piero Fornasetti’s taste for rhythm, symmetry, and surprise.
A celebration of variation, where fruit turns into a visual symphony of form and intent.
→ Swipe through a summery escape of imagination.
#fornasetti #fornasettiarchive]()
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2025-08-18 17:32:09
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From watermelons and ..
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![Inspired by Arcimboldo, reimagined by Fornasetti. Named after the 16th-century Milanese painter known for his portraits composed of fruit, flowers, and everyday objects, the Arcimboldesca series blends surreal nature with historical reference, wit, and illusion.
In these Fornasetti plates and serving pieces from the early 1950s the decorative becomes imaginative, and whimsy blends with craft.
→ Swipe through a celebration of the unexpected.
#fornasetti #fornasettiarchive #arcimboldo]()
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2025-08-16 20:16:03
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Inspired by Arcimboldo,..
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![When decoration gives way to contemplation. At certain times in his career, Piero Fornasetti returned to painting with a series of still lifes where flowers and fruit are rendered with both realism and imagination.
Between symbol and silence, the familiar becomes unexpected: a pansy reveals an eye, and the image opens into something more than what it shows.
→ Swipe through a more intimate side of Fornasetti.
#fornasetti #fornasettiarchive]()
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2025-08-11 17:35:34
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When decoration gives w..
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![Variation as method, obsession, invention.
The iconic female face becomes a cherry, a pear, a pansy; elsewhere, fruit and flowers are rendered in ink, ready to become plates, trays, or table tops.
→ Swipe through a series of Indian ink drawings on paper to enter into the surreal world of Fornasetti.
#fornasetti #fornasettiarchive]()
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2025-08-08 21:36:42
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Variation as method, ob..
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![Before the object, there is the colour. These hand-painted models on paper from the Fornasetti Archive preserve the exact shades behind each creation. Tools of precision, they reveal a world of intent and imagination.
This carousel opens a series dedicated to one of the Atelier’s most iconic themes: flowers.
From stylised drawings to spontaneous invention, Fornasetti’s floral subjects bloom from memory, direct observation, and the family garden itself, home to the iconic hydrangeas.
→ Swipe through a story of colour and form.
#fornasetti #fornasettiarchive #fornasettiflowers]()
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2025-08-06 14:36:38
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Before the object, ..
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![A journey through the boundless creative world of Fornasetti, seen through archival scarves and textiles. Prints, intuitions, variations: the visual language takes shape in silk.
1. Color study for scarf, 1948. An enigmatic gaze, a precursor to the visual inspiration that would later define the Tema e Variazioni series.
2. Frammenti Antichi, hand-painted scarf, 1948. Ancient fragments on silk, a forerunner of motifs later used on tables and screens
3. Sole di St. Moritz, 1940s, one of Fornasetti’s iconic suns, on hand-printed and painted silk
4. Pizzo, silk scarf, 1947: a rare free-form composition on textile by Piero Fornasetti, breaking with the usual symmetry
5. Bottiglie Cocktail, early 1950s. A motif born as a scarf, later applied to furniture and trays. Wearable imagination
6. In 1930s, silk ties marked the transition from paper to fabric printing for Fornasetti. This early design for ties became a scarf in the 1950s.
7. Conchiglie su lastricato, pocket square, 1951. A delicate silk chiffon commission, with hand-painted details extending to the background]()
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2025-07-28 17:36:02
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A journey through the b..
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![Filed as: Press Review
Year: 1939
Magazine: Domus
Topic: a double-page shows an early Fornasetti fabric design
#fornasetti #fornasettiarchive]()
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2025-07-27 23:51:49
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Filed as: Press Review
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![An enigmatic gaze, endlessly repeated.
Tema e Variazioni no. 34 on fabric, from the Archive.
#fornasetti #fornasettiarchive]()
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2025-07-24 17:28:40
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An enigmatic gaze, endl..
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![Filed as: Press Review
Year: 1950
Magazine: Domus
Topic: Fornasetti’s foulards
#fornasetti #fornasettiarchive]()
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2025-07-21 20:31:25
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Filed as: Press Review
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![A hint of summer.
Vintage scarves from the Fornasetti archive. Memories in motion.
#Fornasetti #FornasettiArchive#SummerTraces]()
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2025-07-18 21:44:26
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A hint of summer.
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![In 1950, Piero Fornasetti was invited to create a series of backdrops for the windows of Macy’s department store in New York. He designed theatrical compositions using printed and hand-painted fabrics, whose motifs celebrated Italy’s artistic heritage, interpreted through a Renaissance, classical and artisanal lens: jewels, flowers, armour, vases.
The project was part of “Italy at Work: Her Renaissance in Design Today”, a major traveling exhibition showcasing Italian decorative arts in the post-war period.
An early example of international recognition for Fornasetti’s unique visual language.
→ Swipe through the carousel to explore the archive images behind this remarkable project.
#Fornasetti #FornasettiArchive #ItalianDesign]()
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2025-07-17 16:35:28
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In 1950, Pier..
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![The fabric of ideas. Between the late 1930s and early 1950s, Piero created a remarkable series of hand-printed scarves, the earliest expressions of motifs that would later define Fornasetti’s iconic visual language.
1. Decorative study for the Soli scarf, never produced. 1940s: a clear precursor to the later Sole di Capri motif
2. The animation brings the early motif Angurie to life. This was one of the earliest hand-printed scarves by Piero Fornasetti, exhibited at the VII Triennale di Milano in 1939
3. Colour sketch for the Meduse motif, a design later revived in the 1990s scarf collection by Barnaba Fornasetti
4. A design reimagined through motion, starting from the decorative study for the never produced Visi scarf, ink and watercolour on paper, 1950s
5. Ricette Cocktail foulard, hand-painted
6. Foulard Oggetti su legno, presented at the VII Triennale di Milano in 1939: one of Fornasetti’s boldest and most innovative textile designs, it was chosen by Gio Ponti for the cover of Domus magazine in September 1940
7. Textile study for Occhi, a surrealist composition that would later return in the 2000s, with the eyes from the Tema e Variazioni series featured in scarves and foulards
#fornasetti #fornasettiarchive]()
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2025-07-11 21:36:28
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The fabric of ideas. ..
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![From paper to silk, Piero Fornasetti explored printmaking as a form of artistic expression, turning fabrics into visual stories. A look back at some of the Atelier’s earliest textile creations, all printed by hand:
1. Piero Fornasetti hand-printing the Giornali e Farfalle fabric, a motif that would later evolve into the unmistakable Ultime Notizie decoration
2-3. Two of the earliest hand-printed silk foulards, exhibited at the VII Triennale di Milano in 1939
4. Piero Fornasetti and his wife Giulia Gelmi hand-colouring scarves using an airbrush at the Atelier, Milan, late 1940s
5. Piero and Giulia show an array of hand-printed scarves created in the early 1950s
6. The Manomania foulard: a surreal composition of intertwining hands and fingers, arranged into a continuous festoon, based on drawings from the 1940s
7-8. The two foulards Armatura and Monete break from classic symmetry to embrace a dynamic, informal layout, typical of Fornasetti’s broader visual language
#fornasetti #fornasettiarchive]()
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2025-07-10 22:40:42
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From paper to silk, P..
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![From early sketches to finished scarves, tapestries, and carpets, Fornasetti transforms façades and capitals into wearable or domestic illusions.
Swipe through this textile journey into Fornasetti architectural imagination:
1. 1940s scarf design sketch featuring a lilac-toned architectural façade, inspired by a late 16th-century Venetian building (never produced)
2. Scarf design with Piero Fornasetti’s handwritten notes on colours and production steps. Ink and watercolour on paper, late 1940s
3. Italia che vola: originally conceived for a scarf, this surreal composition gathers iconic Italian towers, churches, and palaces into a dreamlike architectural trophy. Early 1950s
4. Tapestry presented at the 1940 Triennale, designed by Fornasetti and made by the Scuola degli Arazzi in Esino Lario. A forerunner of the iconic Grattacielo Rinascimentale
5. An early 1950s modular architectural motif on scarf, endlessly repeatable, that would later appear on trays, magazine racks, and lamp bases
6. Scarf design sketch, also based on a late 16th-century Venetian building. Late 1940s, never produced
7. Silk scarf Capitello Ionico, created by Barnaba Fornasetti in the 1990s, inspired by a chair decoration
8. Architectural and botanical-themed sketch by Piero Fornasetti. Mixed media on paper, 1950s
9. Mid-2000s wool and silk carpet based on the Cortili plate series designed by Piero in the 1950s. A dizzying top-down view transforms symmetry into a surreal visual experience
#fornasetti #fornasettiarchive]()
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2025-07-06 22:35:47
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From early sketches t..
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![Where architecture meets glass. Fornasetti transforms Palladio’s original floor plans into pure visual rhythm, engraved in Murano glass by S.A.L.I.R.: like abstract dreams for design lovers.
Swipe through this selection to discover the unique project and find an unpublished sketch from the archive.
#fornasetti #fornasettiarchive]()
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2025-06-24 13:37:32
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Where architecture meet..
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![Architectural visions translated into graphics: posters, book covers, and early drawings trace Fornasetti’s evolving decorative universe. Discover this glimpse into the archive.
1. Detail of the exhibition poster for Piero Fornasetti’s 1956 show at Galerie Bernheim Jeune in Paris, one of his earliest international presentations featuring furniture, accessories, and porcelain
2. Print for the architectural-themed exhibit at Galleria dei Bibliofili. The Grattacielo del Rinascimento motif, conceived in the early ’50s, unfolds through collage and xerographic layering
3. Book cover designed by Fornasetti for Alberto Savinio’s La casa la vita, first edition published by Bompiani in 1943
4. 1930s work on paper: Piero Fornasetti’s wax crayon scratch technique over pastel, an early experiment in material and form
5. Promotional design for the 1958 exhibition at Casa Torre, Lugano. The Renaissance skyscraper motif echoes the building itself: the lakeside tower designed by Rino Tami in 1957
6. Detail of the preliminary sketch for the hall installation at Innovation department store, Brussels, 1952
7. Unreleased cover design by Fornasetti from a collage series he created in the late 1980s
#fornasetti]()
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2025-06-19 16:35:45
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Architectural v..
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![Fornasetti’s architectural universe takes shape in unexpected forms, from moving vehicles to one-of-a-kind window displays, porcelain, and beyond. Swipe through this curated journey into the archives.
1. Archivettura, early 1980s. The first collaboration between Piero and Barnaba Fornasetti: a Ford Granada transformed by the Procuratie motif into a moving façade
2. Captured by Ugo Mulas, early 1960s. Piero Fornasetti stands before the Procuratie blinds designed for the Time & Life Building Auditorium in New York
3. Globus window display, Switzerland, 1967. Fornasetti transformed the space with his architectural language: an eclectic skyscraper rising behind a composition of Tema e Variazioni
4. Canal Grande tea set, 1950s. A tribute to Venice: palaces and landmarks from the Grand Canal wrap around porcelain cups and saucers
5. Innovation Brussels window display, 1952. For the Made in Italy event, Fornasetti reinterpreted Italy’s medieval towers and icons through his decorative alphabet
6. Three umbrella stands from the 1950s, where Fornasetti transforms everyday objects into architectural elements
7. A detail of the Pompeiana cabinet, 1950s. Inspired by Pompeii and Herculaneum frescoes, the Pompeiana motif appears on furniture, screens, and textiles
8. Globus Basel window display, 1967. A stage for table lamps, featuring the Palazzo Balbi staircase design from the Trumeau Architettura
9. Architettura tea set, 1950s. The iconic porcelain series where classical facades turn each cup into a miniature architectural vision
#fornasetti]()
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2025-06-17 00:31:41
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Fornasetti’s archite..
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![Step inside the Fornasetti archive. Leaf through the sheets where architectural dreams take shape, and Lina Cavalieri’s face turns into a surreal marble statue, a cornice, a column head.
Swipe to explore a curated selection of original Indian ink drawings from the Atelier:
1. Tema e Variazioni no. 200: an animated glimpse into Fornasetti’s surreal world, where Lina Cavalieri is transformed into an architectural fragment. Based on a late 1950s–60s ink drawing on paper
2. A rare composition of two Indian ink drawing on paper: the Giardino all’italiana, sourced from the Palladiana chest of drawers, and Procuratie, a motif conceived for Venetian blinds in Gio Ponti’s Time & Life Building Auditorium in New York (1958)
3. Tema e Variazioni no. 212: another variation where the female portrait becomes a building element
4. Original Indian ink drawing on paper created for a rarely produced umbrella stand named Palazzo. An imaginary façade conceived to embrace the object’s surface
5. A truly unique sheet: the drawing for a prototype of a ceramic box with an architectural floor plan on the lid and façades on its sides
6. Original Indian ink drawing on paper used across multiple accessories, from lamps, to magazine racks and umbrella stands, showcasing the adaptability of the Architettura motif in the Fornasetti visual language
7. Tema e Variazioni no. 266: a late 1960s drawing where Lina Cavalieri is set within a surreal architectural frame
8. The lower panel of the Architettura Trumeau, which likely represents the grand staircase of Palazzo Balbi in Genoa. A fictional reconstruction of real memory
9. Everyday objects turned into neoclassical fantasies: the original drawing for the Architettura teapot, a miniature Colosseum disguised as tableware
#fornasetti]()
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2025-06-10 00:51:09
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Step inside..
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On average, FORNASETTI gets 1.6K likes and 9 comments per post. (Historical)
