Inspired by the image of an enigmatic beauty found in an old French magazine, Italian artist Piero Fornasetti, reinvented this motif into contemporary porcelain design. Today, the family-run design company is lead by the artist’s son, Barnaba Fornasetti and the production process continues to be characterized by traditional craftsmanship, as each piece is created by hand in the Milan-based atelier.
Before his passing in the late 1980s, when someone would ask Piero Fornasetti to reveal the secret behind his production technique, he would reply with a smile that his secret was “the imagination”. Today, as much as the company’s legacy relies on that brilliant sense of humor, the act
of reproducing Fornasetti’s designs on porcelain and other products is a serious and well studied craft.
Every object created by Fornasetti today is drawn from the historic archive of Piero Fornasetti and is wholly handcrafted at the company’s atelier in Milan with the use of exclusive artisanal techniques. No two examples, even if representing the same design, are absolutely identical. Besides unique pieces and limited editions, each piece of the standard production, a true artistic reproduction, is produced in limited annual edition. Each object is marked with a number and date, and, in some cases, signed by the painter who completed the coloring.
