Fornasetti's first collection of furniture and upholstery designed specifically for outdoors, Il Giardino delle nature possibili, has won the EDIDA 2023, the Elle Deco International Design Awards. Designer outdoor design that skilfully blends symbolic traces, essential signs, decoration, refined materials and craftsmanship. The images convey these distinctive traits through snapshots of fragmented landscapes and re-imagined traces that tell of Fornasetti's garden of possible natures. A landscape in which day and night, spontaneity and control, magic and order coexist. The staging of an untamed nature, with its original and mysterious forms, and a domesticated nature with its reassuring laws and rigours.
"The garden is one of the places where I like to cultivate and care for not only plants and flowers, but also ideas and creativity. Its perfect interweaving of the spontaneity of the greenery growing wild and the rigour of the vegetation shaped by the hand of man reflects the image of our deepest selves. The garden is the place where spontaneity and control coexist," says Barnaba Fornasetti, Artistic Director of Fornasetti.
The Capitellum chairs and Ara Solis tables go to make up dining rooms en plein aire, while the Insoliti Salotti sofas and armchairs are designed to create outdoor relaxation corners, to be immersed in greenery.
The Capitellum chair and the Ara Solis table have a light structure made of stainless steel characterised by essential lines that accommodate the Fornasetti decorations in a completely new way for the Milanese Atelier: the graphic trait becomes form and translates into the very structure of the furniture, becoming material and three-dimensional.
With its shape, the Capitellum outdoor chair takes us back to classical ruins, a theme of inspiration for the Atelier reinterpreted in a contemporary key. Thanks to their design, the chairs can be stacked and their seating made more comfortable with the addition of decorative outdoor cushions. The three colour variants range from the more classic tones of white and black to the brighter shades of yellow, applied through matt varnish.
The Ara Solis garden table is also available in three colours, with a base reminiscent of the grooves of classical columns and a top featuring one of Fornasetti's unmistakable suns, a laser-cut decoration. The interplay between full and empty spaces, the echo of classical architecture and the reference to the natural world given by the sun, all typical features of the Fornasetti world, leave the confines of the home for outdoor living.
For living en plein air, Fornasetti extends the Insoliti Salotti collection, created for indoor use in 2020, and makes them into outdoor furniture that can transform any corner into a cosy living room. Sofas, armchairs and benches are made with coloured stainless steel frames and upholstered with outdoor fabrics printed with geometric patterns, from lozenges to stripes, and with some of the Atelier's designs, from suns to the architecture of neoclassical facades. The upholstery is available in a wide variety of bright colours and fabric patterns, so that multiple sets and different creative configurations can be composed.
Complements and accessories complete the collection to accompany every moment of the day: round or rectangular food trolleys, practical and manageable, are suitable for both outdoor and indoor use thanks to their stainless steel structure. Designed specifically to hold Fornasetti trays, they take on a new look with each different combination of decoration and colour, amplifying the cultural messages of Fornasetti's language that the trays have always conveyed. The ice-cups and Cammei trays in two new chromatic proposals, together with glasses and jugs, thanks to the decorations and colours hand-painted by the Atelier's painters, fill convivial atmospheres with elegance.
Attention to detail and respect for the timing of craftsmanship remain the essential elements in the fine-tuning of each Fornasetti creation. The products in the collection, from chairs to upholstered furniture, require workmanship by skilled craftsmen in each of the many steps of the production cycle, which lasts several days.
photo credits: Fantacuzzi Galati
