The Artisans

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.

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.

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.

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.

Born in Poggibonsi near Siena, Tuscany, artist Cecilia Chiavistelli was introduced to arts by Senese master Otello Chiti and painter and engraver Leopoldo Ferruzzi. Her first exhibition in her hometown in 1977 sowed the seeds for a satisfying professional path that, from 1993 on, took her to Roncegno, Italy, Freiberg, Germany, Lagos, Algarve, Portugal, and the Czech Republic for symposiums and exhibitions. A freelance journalist since 2007, Chavistelli is currently dedicated to her own graphic design studio and to attending stages and training courses.

Based in Ossola, Piedmont, Pietre Trovanti distills the magic of stone offcuts sourced from design and applied arts projects by transforming them into objets d’art. Embracing a design vision inspired by nature, where every beginning stems from an end, its collections feature pieces conceived by designers and crafted by skilled artists and local artisans. The finished products are entirely unrepeatable, from their shape and weight to the gradients and mineral kind. Pietre Trovanti’s pieces are like snowflakes: though descending from the same cloud, they are individually unique.

Transforming his passion into a career, Claudio Orlandi began exhibiting his photography pieces in 2010, taking part in various art fairs and collaborating with major designated magazines. His oeuvres display a distinctive minimalist style, an essential abstraction that is philosophically profound, reflecting the concept of vastness and details.

Doodesign is an interior design studio in Bologna specialised in finishes like curtains, sofas, wallpapers, lighting, flooring, and more. The three founders leverage research and innovation to propose striking decors and furnishings that put the customer at the center, using historic brands, icons, new trends, and up-and-coming designers to build their vision. Their collaboration with artist Niccolò Morgan Gandolfi resulted in the Stele Outdoor Collection, a line of bespoke pieces with distinctive phyto-inspired/traditional traits that effortlessly bridge past and present.

A sublime combination of realist techniques and inspirations with surrealist influences and creativity, Marco Grassi is an Italian artist based in Friuli Venezia Giulia. He encourages a silent dialogue between the subject and the audience through distinctive portraits displaying passionate and minute attention to detail. Merging decorative accents and hyper-realistic hues, he recently developed an interest in wood, enhancing the nonconformity of his body of work. His many solo and group exhibitions have been hosted in Berlin, Zurich, Amsterdam, Kiev, and Italy.

Born in Rome in 1967, Oliviero Pagliaroli started his professional path as a designer and architect after attending a Fine Arts High School followed by an Architecture degree at the Roma Tre University. While partnering with architectural firms and participating in national and international contests, he progressively turned to painting and fully embracing Informalism, with its abstract and gestural tendencies. In 2000, he founded his atelier BLACK OFFICE and began collaborating with artist Aleandro Nardinocchi, co-founder of the WHITECUBE3 exhibition area in Rome.