Major kudos to anyone who paints their guest-room red. “Red like this is difficult to stay more than three days, so it’s perfect for the guests!” laughs Barnaba Fornasetti, proprietor of the historic Casa Fornasetti in Milan and artistic director of the famed interior-design brand bearing his family name.
As he sits in his office chair in the renowned residence situated in the Città Studi district of Milan, wearing a grey blazer with a loose tie and oozing disarming banter one morning over Zoom, it’s hard to believe Fornasetti is anything but the most welcoming host. “Call me Barny,” he says, when I, knowing that a lot of old Italian design houses prefer formal prefixes in interviews – see Mr Armani and Mrs Prada – ask if he’s happy for me to address him by his first name.
Fornasetti is one of the oldest, most renowned brands to come out of Italy. For those unacquainted, it was established by Barnaba’s father, Piero, in the 1950s and is to Italian interiors what Elsa Schiaparelli was to fashion: a brand heralded for impressing its surrealist, avant garde lens on a world that would be infinitely more boring without it.
You may know Fornasetti for its most famous signifier: the image of the actor and opera singer Lina Cavalieri. Hers is the face staring back wistfully, startlingly and intriguingly on everything from its bathroom tiles, furniture, wallpaper, scented candles and, most famously, its limited-edition plates, found in the most salubrious of homes for eons.
Remarkably, his father didn’t discover the identity of Cavalieri – whom he first found anonymously in a French magazine in 1952, eight years after her death – until years after he started iterating it, in total more than 350 times. He was, says his son, more interested in using designs and decorations because “they were aesthetically interesting” rather than because, in her case, she was the Madonna of her day. When he did find out who she was, “It only increased his enthusiasm.”
The anecdote speaks to Barnaba’s own nonconformist and prolific approach to creation as much as it does to his father’s. Despite a route into the family business being the obvious path, he “escaped” in his 20s after fighting with his father, working with the fashion designer Ken Scott to produce underground magazine projects and restoring farmhouses in Tuscany. When his father asked him to return to Milan and work alongside him in the atelier in 1982, he accepted – “It was easier to work with him then; he was less authoritative because I had demonstrated I was able to provide without him,” says Barnaba. When his father died in 1988, he took the reins.
At 71, he maintains the fresh perspective of someone who was able to find independence from the family firm. His experimental nature extends to his home, too, for despite having inherited Casa Fornasetti – which was built by his grandparents in the early 19th century – and a lot of the things in it are from his father, it is, unapologetically, Barny’s place. “It’s a manifestation of myself and the Fornasetti way of living, which is not easy for the majority of people,” he says. “I think of design like installations; this house is full of small installations.”
I bring his attention to one such “installation” in his office, where a dizzying pile of publications is nearly reaching the ceiling. “The tower of books! When they arrive at the ceiling, I want to continue on the upper floor.” They are, in fact, rare auction catalogues featuring vintage Fornasetti design objects, of which he is an avid collector and some of which are to be found in the adjacent cabinet. The ever-growing Fornasetti archive is something which he takes pride in preserving.
Preservation is a theme here and has thrown up its fair share of tales. For instance, intent on cataloguing his father’s book collection, Barnaba enlisted an antiquarian to see if any were valuable. Yes, he was assured, he had some important tomes, but pages were either cut up or missing (Piero, it turned out, had been something of a Scissorhands when compiling moodboards).
The 20-room-plus residence, which he describes as “a museum, a workshop, an office, a studio, an archive, many things” and shares with his fiancé, Valeria Manzi, and his cat, Faye, has several more autobiographical spaces.
The kitchen, where Fornasetti loves to cook, features butterflies – a decorative signature of his father’s – which he has collaged with newspaper cuttings talking about the brand. The graphic stretches across every surface from the floor and walls to the table and chairs.
In the black-and-white bathroom, a trompe l’oeil carpet currently in production is countered by Cavalieri headlining the tiles. “She’s a muse and inspiration that started with my father and has continued with me,” he smiles. She must feel like a part of the family by now, I say. “In some ways. My dream is to make a film about her… she was very transgressive.”
Elsewhere, the living room has a shelved window featuring rainbow-hued Biedermeier glasses collected by father and son since the 1940s, and the principal guest bedroom is covered in wallpaper designed by Fornasetti.
Dreamy and relaxing, this room was originally his parents’ and is now reserved only for “important guests” (who are presumably happy to stay for more than three nights).
Surprisingly, for all the enchantment inside, Fornasetti is most relaxed in is his garden, where he tends his 3m-high hydrangea plants (“they are older than me”) and banana trees. “For me, gardening is very relaxing and creative – it’s a way of slow creativity, which is a lesson that many of us need to understand.”
In his garden, as in life, “you have to wait to see the results”, he says. Take it from one who knows.
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