Barnaba Fornasetti is defined as a guardian of values, having led the atelier of his father Piero, being a brilliant figure in 20th-century design and decorative arts, since 1988, over thirty-five years ago. These values have been passed down and renewed with imagination, generosity, and entrepreneurial spirit, encouraging creativity, playful experimentation, and the invitation to dream. “Practical madness”, the title of the 2013 exhibition at the Triennale di Milano Design Museum, commemorating Piero’s centenary, manifests across countless everyday objects of exceptional craftsmanship, designed to endure beyond fleeting trends. Among these, the iconic Tema e Variazioni series stands out, a collection of women’s faces printed on plates and other furnishings, including furniture, glasses, coasters, and trays. The family’s historic home and atelier on Via Bazzini in Milan, which has been Fornasetti’s residence since the late 19th century and Piero’s artistic laboratory with a lithographic press, is now the creative and design hub for Barnaba, transformed into a manifesto of Fornasetti’s aesthetic, imaginative capacity, and genius spark. The atelier also produces interior decorations, total-look projects, wallpapers, fragrances, candles, collaborations with other brands, and even opera and theatre works, as well as made-to-measure services. This bespoke design service listens to the designer’s needs to create tailored objects and interiors, supported by a creative and design team, artisans, and decorators. Fornasetti customized. Thus, decorative art meets the world of yachting through collaboration with Ferretti Group, united by another value Barnaba pursues: Made in Italy, the commitment to creating unique products that embody elegance, style, creativity, high-quality craftsmanship, and attention to detail. A new immersive experience, for sophisticated environments, carrying the Fornasetti signature in Riva and Custom Line projects. "The world of yacht design is not so far from our universe," says Barnaba. “Fornasetti was born from the desire to transform everyday functionality into visual poetry — and I believe the same happens in nautical design, where advanced technology serves beauty, comfort, and the emotion of the journey. Both worlds share a constant search for balance between ingenuity and art, precision and imagination. The collaboration with Ferretti Group arose from this affinity. We recognized ourselves in the same culture of doing things well. Together, we began a path that merges our languages: the tradition and craftsmanship of iconic brands like Riva and Custom Line with Fornasetti’s decorative and narrative approach. The first concrete step was the Private Room at the Riva shipyard in La Spezia, where some Fornasetti furnishings and objects transform a technical space into a meeting point between art and navigation. But the main work is always directed at new ideas, exploring how decoration can dialogue with yacht interiors, enhancing their essence without compromising function.” Already in the 1950s, Piero created custom interiors in collaboration with architects such as Gio Ponti, for example, in the Zodiaco suite on the Andrea Doria or in the games room of the Giulio Cesare transatlantic liner, where every element was conceived to create a unique decorative universe. “I felt the need to revive that historical tradition, reinterpreting it in a contemporary key,” Barnaba continues, “always with our artisanal approach and imagination at the center. This way, each space becomes a personalized story, where every object is unique and tells the Fornasetti vision.” Similarly, the Atelier collaborates with major design brands such as Poltrona Frau, Bisazza, Louis Vuitton, and in hospitality, such as Mandarin Oriental, with the Milan suite decorated by Barnaba at the invitation of architects Antonio Citterio and Patricia Viel, featuring Nuvolette wallpaper and curtains, the Architettura trumeau, the Palladiana chest of drawer, and the Ultime Notizie table, accompanied in the dining room by Capitello chairs. Whether private home, hotel suite, or yacht, the spaces become a journey of illusory games and decorative variations. "Yacht interiors and home interiors share the same ambition: to create an environment that reflects the identity of those who inhabit it. The difference is that on board, every detail must coexist with movement, water, and the changing light of the sea. It is a subtler, almost musical balance between aesthetics and function. I am fascinated by how naval space can maintain a domestic soul while complying with very precise technical rules. It is a world where design must be essential but not cold, refined but resilient. Our decorative techniques had to adapt to surfaces that withstand particular conditions, without sacrificing the artisanal and poetic value that defines us,” he adds. Perhaps it is also a place to continue experimenting in search of harmony with the technology and techniques that characterize yacht interiors. “The encounter with the nautical world has been a lesson in discipline and measure. I learned that creative freedom can coexist with engineering precision, and that even in a technical context, there is room for imagination. It is a fruitful dialogue: the boat, like the home, can be a place of the soul, only in this case, it moves.” Yes, the places of the soul… And the sea? A source of inspiration for many decorations, such as the beautiful wallpapers of the Acquario series, or for the rediscovered Diary of a Saleswoman in Capri, which brings to light fragments of a distant summer. "When I was a child, my summer holidays included outings with my father on two small boats, a sailing dinghy and a rowboat (my father opposed engines on the lake), which we had on Lake Como: memories that shaped my imagination and my fascination with water. The sea, and water in general, have always inspired Fornasetti’s creativity: from the naval suites decorated by my father to objects adorned with fish, shells, octopuses, corals, and other marine themes. I remember that when I was little, during one summer at the lake, I helped my mother assemble a large ceiling chandelier, made of thousands of shells threaded one by one with painstaking patience, under my father’s watchful eye. Today, whenever I can, I like to travel by sea among the remote islets of the Mediterranean or simply swim: water is my element, the place to relax, reflect, and let my imagination run free.” It is always storytelling, the narrative that becomes iconography, that guides the Fornasetti spirit, from father to son. The beginning was not easy: Piero was a complex man, and Barnaba distanced himself, leaving Milan for Tuscany, where he renovated farmhouses until 1982, when he returned to work alongside his father, eventually taking over the business in 1988 upon Piero’s passing. Today, the Fornasetti Atelier is increasingly international, open to the world and to experimentation with forms and materials. “The thread that connects objects and interiors is always the same attention to creativity and craftsmanship. Every piece, large or small, is born from an idea meant to surprise and tell a story. Translating our vision on a larger scale means conceiving space as a harmonious whole, where furniture, objects, and decorative details interact, creating an environment that is coherent and poetic. Every project is an opportunity to reinterpret the aesthetic language, respecting proportions and spatial requirements, while never losing the irony, imagination, and artisanal precision that distinguish our work.” It is with philological rigor that the re-editions, drawing from the paternal heritage, and the reinventions, Barnaba’s own creations, are produced, often difficult for the untrained eye to distinguish. The extremely rich Fornasetti Archive, which houses 13,000 creations, cannot be assigned to a specific category: it is not strictly design, nor art; it is a form of contemporary decorative art, long considered minor art, which in Fornasetti has found someone able to elevate it. The difference? Decorative art always exists in symbiosis with something else: design, scenography, fashion, or other art forms. Consider butterflies, hands, fish, bottles, or the decoration of the Arlecchino Cinema in Milan, created by Piero in the 1940s with architects Menghi and Righini, alongside Lucio Fontana. Or the phantasmagorias of the magnificent Lucano Apartment, the Casa di Fantasia designed in 1951 with Gio Ponti for a Milanese family, 30 lots auctioned by Cambi with Phillips London for over two million euros. "The cat is the latest protagonist in a poetic universe we have cultivated for decades: every motif recurring in our visual language has its own story, meaning, and capacity to evoke emotions,” concludes Barnaba. “In the case of the cat, its independence, mysterious elegance, and gaze that seems to know invisible secrets make it the perfect interpreter of the Fornasetti spirit: curious, ironic, and always suspended between reality and imagination.”
