Memories for the Future

The imaginative universe of Piero Fornasetti, an iconic figure of Italy’s economic boom, and the creative continuity of his son Barnaba.

Piero Fornasetti started his business in the immediate postwar period, when in 1947—encouraged by Gio Ponti, who first sensed his talent—he presented ceramics at the eighth Milan Triennale. In the early 1950s, together with Ponti, he created the furnishings for the great Italian transatlantic liners, a fruitful collaboration that would give him great visibility. Piero Fornasetti quickly expanded production with furniture, furnishings and accessories, household objects, and fabrics, becoming an iconic designer in Italy as the country was reborn, rebuilt, and transformed after the war in the years of the economic boom. Some of Fornasetti’s furniture—the trumeau, the desk, the chest of drawers—have fully entered the history of twentieth-century Italian design.

After Piero’s death in 1988, his son Barnaba took the reins of the company, enhancing his father’s incredible visual archive, relaunching the brand, and ferrying it toward international development of great prestige, with exhibitions and activities in museums around the world.

Fornasetti is a brand that is now known all over the world and is sought-after by international collectors. The imaginative universe that Fornasetti builds around its ironic objects and outside any conventions is unique and unparalleled.

This book, made in close collaboration with Barnaba Fornasetti, who has penned the foreword, traces the story of this exciting human and creative adventure.