The Artisans

“First came the egg!” Mario Bottiglieri was born in 1964 in Naples. After starting a degree in Architecture, he quit it to pursue his two major passions, design and Naples, in a more practical way. Expressive and conceptual, Bottiglieri is a well-established interior designer. Mario experiments with furniture and decorative objects blending Neapolitan traditions and a contemporary concepts and style. His work is now a reference when it comes to home décor, the EGG being the signature object of his artistic creations.

Marco Castorina is the heir of an ancient family of carvers, a reference for the prestigious Florence wood artisan guild since 1895. His careful work and research led the shop to be considered unique in its field, becoming a landmark for architects and interior designers, with more than 5.000 items in continuous evolution. The knowledge of the Castorina family is handed down from father to son since the beginning of their activity to safeguard the Florentine heritage.

Silvio Piattelli comes from a home furnishing and lighting background and is proficient in a multitude of medias like glass, marble, wood and ceramics. He has worked on projects with countless prestigious companies, designing at first universal hardware and then moving to more complex and innovative lighting fixtures. Two years ago, Silvio released his first solo collection, the Alchemist collection, specializing in fixtures that use glass and metals to diffuse light producing interesting reflections and retractions, and luxuriously illuminating spaces.

The family-owned old Tuscan bottega Manetti e Masini has been running for the past 50 years. It is there in Florence that aged artisans meticulously pass on the secrets of traditional techniques to new generations of ceramists. Manetti e Masini specializes in reproducing historic designs but also modern ones, as well as restoring antique Italian maiolicas, an activity that enormously enhanced their expertise. Everything they do is handmade and has, therefore, the one-off quality typical of true artistic craftsmanship.

The Cereria Pernici factory, founded in 1892, still carries on the family history creating new shapes, colors, and fragrances each year in their Bergamo laboratory and continuing a century-old tradition. The same processes developed by the founding ancestors are still being used, producing handmade products with extreme attention to every detail. Only top quality ingredients are used in these internationally sold exquisite objects.

Frédéric Louis Fourrichon is a French architect based in Berlin who has been focusing on product design and working with Italian artisans to create customized interiors since 2014. In this collection he works with Fratelli Speranza, a brand that has been engaging three generations of artisans in manufacturing and restoring marble since its start in 1958. The experience of Fratelli Speranza in crafting home décor pieces in the most luxurious stones joins Fourrichon’s bold designs and creates fine hand-manufactured objects.

The histories of the Carrara Marble and the Bufalini family have always been tightly connected. For more than three hundred years the Bufalini family has been present and active in the sector of stoneworking and marble carving. Their experience has been developed over the years until it reached the highest degree of competence and know-how. The expertise acquired in the marble industry is visible in some of the most important buildings across the globe: Europe, the Middle East, the Far East, and the United States. Four generations have lived for the marble and have contributed to creating a profound knowledge of the stone and its peculiarities. The technical staff of Bufalini has been trained over the years, creating precious know-how and the vast majority of them have been working in the business for many years, granting reliability and continuity to the whole organization.

Specializing in contemporary ceramics, artist Benedetto Ferraro founded Terrenotrie Ceramiche workshop in 2010 based in the historical center of a small town in the province of Cosenza (Calabria, Italy). At first creating everyday objects such as plates, cups, and vases, Ferraro has taken part in various art exhibitions where he showcases singular oeuvres that merge traditional artisanal craftsmanship with creative contemporary sensibilities.

The first chapter of Il Fanale’s story starts in 1979 when Fausto Dalla Torre and his wife, Luisa Martin, opened a small lamp workshop in Treviso. Their children Marzia and Tomas joined the family business in 2004, dedicating themselves to enriching the brand with contemporary-style collections. General manager and Artistic Director, respectively, since 2015, they are creative minds behind Torremato, a sub-brand focused on experimental projects that take shape in collaboration with brilliant designers such as Enzo Berti, winner of the Compasso D’Oro prize with the Bitta Lamp.

Young craftsman and designer William Mulas founded his own workshop WM Metal Design in 2021 specializing in sculpture and furniture-making. WM Metal Design is the culmination of Mulas’ experience in his family metalworking workshop. Inspired by everything in nature and in the human experience, the brand creates sophisticated and singular designs of strong symbolism and significance.

World-renowned for her unmistakable stylistic language, Amanda Toy is a tattoo artist, painter, sculptor, and illustrator in the contemporary art scene. Born in Genova, she is currently based in Milan, creating joyful, colorful, and, at times, spiritually charged designs in her studio. Her first painting at age sixteen is reminiscent of Rothko squares, striking with its flat yet vivid fuchsia and yellow tones.

A joint brand of the Sicilian, family-run linen company, Bellavia SRL, The NapKing creates first-rate napkins and tableware linens of timeless refinement. Handmade of the finest fabrics, linen, and cotton, its pieces feature striking and original designs digitally printed onto prized textiles. From production to packaging, The NapKing’s distinctive feature is the meticulous care for details, enhancing the brand’s exceptional elegance.

Artist Lia Bosch’s artwork express a vision of the world seen through a lens that does not tolerate labels. Bosch’s time in New York, Los Angeles, and Paris, coupled with formative experiences in fashion, photography, dance, design, and acting, strengthened her all-around artistic language which she had cultivated at the Accademia di Brera in Milan. Non-stop evolution rooted in tradition is the guiding force behind her art.

Moving between the slow-paced, idyllic landscapes of Tuscany and the fast-paced, urban jungle of Milan, Claudia Mastrangelo is a contemporary artist and ceramist who creates stupendous archaic forms of feminine inspiration. She works with grès, a type of waterproof stoneware, and porcelain, which she molds and transforms to create abstracted tableware objects and vases.

Born and raised in Bari (Puglia, Italy), artist Fabio De Felice began his career in Milan in the early 2000s as an illustrator for fashion magazines and a textile/design consultant for fashion brands. Inspired by artists such as Martin Margiela and Michael Kirkham, in 2020 he created a series of portraits of unidentified models, focusing on small details and gestures. De Felice’s art questions what we see, elevating doubt over certainty and expressing a silent interiority seeking the meaning of existence.

Fauandflo is a contemporary design brand established from the collaboration between artist and designer Alfredo Chiaramonte and Andrea Crescente, founder of Crescente Interni and Progetto Chorus. Fauandflo celebrates the animal kingdom, transforming marvelous land and marine species into elegant interior design pieces. Their collections feature small creations conceived following a freehand process, deftly handmade in the district of Nove in Veneto renowned for its ceramic manufacturing tradition.

Founded by Donata Mariasole Betti and Michele Citti, Bettisatti is an interior design brand based in Tuscany, Italy. Designing space for the art world and for the living, Bettisatti experiments following a dialectical interplay of various artistic and scientific disciplines. Their careful selection of sophisticated natural raw materials conveys the expressive, archetypal traits of the local community and highlights the importance of a circular economy.

A student of visual arts (NABA Art Academy of Milan) and painting (Academy of Venice), Italian artist Federica Vesprini explores the themes of estrangement, identity, and memory in relation to contemporary society. Starting from archival photographs, often from her private collection, she employs paint as a filter to convey individuals' vulnerability and challenges, twisting and distorting objective reality to infuse a subjective, emotional view.

Renowned as the creative force behind some of the world’s most successful brands, Italian photographer Oliviero Toscani is the man behind some of the most iconic corporate images and ad campaigns to raise awareness for social issues. Moving between Paris, London, Milan, and New York, he collaborates with international newspapers and magazines such as Elle, Vogue, Esquire, Stern, Liberation, and many others, and has exhibited his work in modern and contemporary art museums all over the world. His self-portrait is on display in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

With feet grounded in the Po Valley and heart beating in the Far East, art director and photographer Alessandro Zanoni has a passion for urban landscape and architecture. His photo essays - shot in South Korea, Japan, and the ghost districts of Inner Mongolia, Wuhan, and Shanghai - investigate the relationship between cities and humans. He has won several international photography prizes, such as Sony World Photography Awards and Lens Culture, to name a few. His pieces have been published in Domus, Vice, Photography of China, Il Fotografo, and Style Magazine, among others.