The Sun, the Moon, and Lina
& collect
Piero Fornasetti (1913-1988) was one of the the pioneers of branded accessories. He designed more than 11,000 products with the Fornasetti label including tableware, accessories, furniture, rugs and tiles. In collaboration with legendary Italian architect Gio Ponti, he also produced chairs, sideboards and tables. Fornasetti lived and worked in Milan. There are recurring topics in his typical visual vocabulary, where he mixes classical motifs with a good measure of irony: Suns, moons, elements of classical Greek and Roman architecture, and a female face. The face is the portrait of Natalina (Lina) Cavalieri (1875-1944), a diva of the Belle Epoque with an extraordinary life story. Piero Fornasetti, who did not know Cavalieri in person, said that her face inspired him because it was an archetype, a beautiful and classic image.

Born in Rome in 1875, Natalina Cavalieri, born into a poor family, worked as a flower girl. She started singing, was discovered by a café owner, and soon became a star at the Folies Bergère in Paris. She got to know and married a Russian prince, Alexandre Bariatinsky, who paid her singing lessons with Mariani Masi, and eventually made a debut at the Theatro San Carlos in Napoli in 1900 at the side of Enrico Caruso. Her performance was not met with applause and she moved Lisbon, but was again met with disapproval. Her next appearance as Mimi in La Bohème was met with a warmer reception. She sang Marguerite (Gounod´s Faust), Fedora (Giordano), Manon (Massenet), Tosca and Thaïs. Eventually she moved to New York, where she sang at the Metropolitan Opera and married the painter Robert Chanler, a member of the Astor and Dudley-Winthrop families. The marriage ended during their honeymoon, when it was discovered that Chanler had signed over his entire fortune to Natalina in a prenuptial agreement. After an extended legal battle with his family, Cavalieri accepted a cash settlement of 80,000 dollars. Robert Chanler was disowned by his family. Lina started a perfumery business on Fifth Avenue (which she claimed was based on secrets of Catherine de Medici), appeared in newspaper ads for Palmolive soap, and eventually moved back to France, where she opened beauty salons all over the country and in Monte Carlo. There, Natalina married the French tenor Lucien Muratore and made a series of silent movies, the first being Manon Lescaut, based on the a novel by Abbé Prévost. She eventually retired to her villa in Florence, by now divorced from Muratore, and married for the fourth time: Giovanni Campari, son of the Campari brand of aperitifs. She was killed by allied bombing in February 7, 1944. The newspapers recorded that she was on her way to the air-raid shelter when she fatefully decided to run back to her villa to fetch her jewelry.
share The Sun, the Moon, and Lina
penccil.com/gallery.php?show=9870
  Inspirations.  
FASHION ADVERTISING
RESEARCH
ILLUSTRATION
RESEARCH
Geigy, Swiss and European Graphic Design
Selection of outstanding graphic design from Europe
Vico Magistretti
Vico Magistretti (1920 - 2006) studied in Lausanne and Milano. He was one of the main protagonists o...
Book : Monk
A book by Jonathan Monk.
Book : Tajima
A book by Mika Tajima. Negative Entropy is a series of five abstract Jacquard woven portraits of in...
Book : Lewitt
A book by Sam Levitt. TEMPLATE is a book whose information emerges under programmatic erasure. Or p...
Book : Baldessari
A book by John Baldessari.
Book : Armleder
A book by John Armleder.
Book : Mullican
A book by Matt Mullican.
Book : Weiner
A book by Lawrence Weiner.
Book : Cattelan
A book by Maurizio Cattelan.
Book : Brannon
A book by Matthew Brannon.
Structured Reflection
These 3D-printed vases feature finely faceted surface structures which create intriguing light refle...
Gaetano Pesce: Abstraction is boring
"Abstraction is boring and limited as a mode of expression. Reducing and reducing designs means that...
Chromatic seating
3 colorful seats by 3 Italian designers: Giancarlo Zema graduated from the Faculty of Architecture o...
The Menu
The food menu as we know it today is an invention of the 19th century. Traditionally, during a meal ...
What Is A Simulation?
What is a simulation? It is a private game we devise when the aliveness of a situation is too comple...
The algorithm of fashion
Each of these scarf patterns is unique. The production workflow involves an algorithm which creates ...
Books of Memory: Gianpaolo Pagni
Gianpaolo Pagni creates unique, printed, painted or stamped books. His work focuses around memory an...
Memphis Posters
4 posters by the legendary Italian design collective Memphis Milano.
Groupe Garcia Ingénierie
Corporate identity. Marseille, France, 2015.
Akiko Masunaga
マスナガデザイン部/Art director/Designer/O型/乙女座
Joe Colombo: Total Furnishing Unit
The Total furnishing unit: Bathroom by Joe Colombo, Milano 1971.
Management 7
7 thoughts on management: Paradox, Management, Hierarchy, Bureaucracy, Trust, Vision, Motivation. (C...
Carlo Scarpa: Sketch and Work
There is hardly another architect of the 20th century in whose work the progression from sketch to c...
E=C=L=I=P=S=E
Cerith Wyn Evans is a Welsh sculptor and filmmaker. He worked as an assistant to Derek Jarman, at th...
Tom Ngo
"Common sense and conventional practice prohibits the evolution of architecture. Through reproducing...
Sislej Xhafa
Sislej Xhafa has furnished the waiting room of a police station in Gent like a grand palace. He pres...
Future Architecture
Future Architecture Platform is a European program which promotes talents in architecture. Future A...
Superstudio, Superproduction, Superconsumption
Superarchitecture is the architecture of superproduction, of superconsumption, of superinduction to ...
Visual Music
Viktor Hertz was born in Uppsala, Sweden, in 1983. In 2009, he started to do graphic design as a hob...
Heartbeat, Heartseat
Heartbeat consists of a massive heart glowing to the rhythm of a strong, deep and low frequency hear...
Ignite
"What I try to do is use technology to create representations of imagery found in nature. Technology...
Liqen
Liqen was born in 1980, in Vigo, a port and industrial city of Galicia, in Spain. Since very little,...
L’ITALIA CI GUARDIA
On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the birth of the Italian Republic, 40 masters of photogra...
20th Century Italian Tables
A collection of 20th century Italian table designs.
Xavier Antin: Printing at Home
A printer manual to disturb and disrupt the printing process. Xavier Antin, born in 1981, lives and ...
Porcelain Monobloc
This work consists of nine unique, porcelain reproductions of different styles of mono-block resin c...
72 dpi
Images on the Internet are changing our lives. While images were once only reserved for a certain fe...
Tea Time
TEA AVE es una marca Canadiense de Tés Oolong. Nos pidieron el desarrollo de la imagen gráfica, la...
BASILE ARTECO "Monoblocco" design Donata Paruccini
pen-holder design Donata Paruccini
BASILE ARTECO
BASILE ARTECO EDIZIONI logo
BASILE ARTECO "Falce/Scythe" design anonimo
Design Anonimo, Scythe in forged iron handmade in Italy in the occasion of the exhibition of the "FE...
BASILE ARTECO "Ferro/D" design Enzo Mari
DESIGN ENZO MARI: Forged iron and Murano Glass Vase, Limited Edition of 6, numbered and signed by th...
BASILE ARTECO "Ferro/A" design Enzo Mari
DESIGN ENZO MARI: Forged iron fruit-bowl Limited Edition of 4, numbered and signed by the Author Enz...
BASILE ARTECO "Ferro/B" design Enzo Mari
DESIGN ENZO MARI: Forged iron fruit-bowl, Limited Edition of 6 numberd and signed by the Author Enzo...
BASILE ARTECO "Ferro/C" design Enzo Mari
DESIGN ENZO MARI: Forged iron and Murano Glass Vase, limited Edition of 4 signed and numbered by the...
BASILE ARTECO "L´Utopia" design Enzo Mari
ENZO MARI: Original hand written script on paper for Vincenzo Basile exhibition "Ferri Forgiati" Gal...
BASILE ARTECO "Monoblocco/L" design Donata Paruccini
DESIGN DONATA PARUCCINI: pen holder
BASILE ARTECO "Coquetier" design Paolo Ulian
DESIGN PAOLO ULIAN: egg-holder
F zero zero d
Plates decorated with stylized prints of stereotypical food items: a hot dog, a steak, a slice of pi...
Áron Jancsó
“I’m a type addict. Building from scratch is how I like to work, sometimes even designing every ...
Korean containers
A formal exploration of ceramic food containers inspired by Korean traditional forms. (C) Mario Gagl...
DADAMAINO
“I have always loathed the material and have always sought the immaterial” Dadamaino (Emilia Edo...
Sketching: Bellini, Castiglioni, Colombo, Mari, Magistretti, Munari, Ponti, Sottsass
The essence of a classic design is best seen in its very first sketch. A unique selection of sketche...
AG Frozoni: We need to aim at essential things
“We need to aim at essential things, to remove every redundant effects, every useless flowering, t...
Andrea Guccini: 4A+1
Andrea Guccini, born in Bologna in 1993, studied at the IED in Milan. He is living and working betw...
Julien Notter and Sébastien Vigne
Basé à Lausanne, Notter + Vigne est un atelier graphique fondé en 2002 par les designers Julien N...
Erwin Poell: Naturwissenschaft + Technik
Erwin Poell (1930) is a German graphic designer. From 1951 he studied with Walter Brudi at the State...
E. Hu
Eric Hu is an art director based in New York. He previously worked as the design lead at OKFocus. Er...
Radiofonografo RR126
The Brionvega RR126, designed by Pier Giacomo and Achille Castiglioni in 1965, was a remarkable inno...
George Sowden
George Sowden studied architecture at Gloucester College of Art. From 1970 he lived in Milan, workin...
Jug
The Jugs’s design process contains a number of phases; each one of the phases was executed by a di...
Angelo Mangiarotti
Angelo Mangiarotti was born in Milano in 1921. He graduated in Architecture in 1948 at Politecnico d...
Carlo Mollino: Tables and Chairs
Carlo Mollino (1905 - 1973) studied art history at the University of Ghent and architecture at the U...
Opie
Julian Opie studied at Goldsmiths´ College (1979-82) under Michael Craig-Martin, for whom he briefl...
Make War, Not Love
Digitally printed charmeuse silk series 'Touchingly Unfeeling' by Jonathan Zawada. Jonathan Zawada...
Alessio Bassan
Alessio Bassan: born in 1962, I live and work in Thiene, Italy. Self-taught Designer, from almost im...
The Many Sides of the Moon
Variations on light refraction patterns through a prism, in a set-up reminding on the iconic cover o...
also:
Eden
Paper sculpture
Mario Casa Tables
Mario Casa coffee tables, side tables and dining tables are 100% handcrafted by our cabinetmakers in...
Surface N° 2
Arctic Paper presents Surface N° 2 – a second edition featuring a specially curated selection of ...
The painted house
These experimental structures have been created by combining design processes of architecture and gr...
Candy Morandi
Giorgio Morandi's ceramic vessels have been the inspiration for this project. Morandi´s objects are...
Casa Sperimentale
One of the most visionary built experiments of 20th century architecture was created through the per...
SCARABOOK
SCARABOOK is the combination of Scarabottolo and the English word book (but perhaps we ought to say ...
My calendar
I start to make it in 2000, the year in which the future has passed, at the request of Adriano Mei G...
71 views of the magic mountain
In the days of the first lockdown I started making these drawings, remotely inspired by Hokusai´s "...
on paper books and e-books
these drawings were made thinking about what is happening to the books through various titles of cla...
Ebb and Flow
This student design project smartly uses paper to give shape to the intertidal coastline of Taiwan, ...
Culinary Tradition
Four examples of contemporary food packaging designs inspired by traditional Chinese patterns and gr...
TRIAL
Old-school postal packaging usually gets little attention from graphic designers. Not so in this fun...
Archip-elles
Swiss graphic designers We Play created this pop-art inspired, fun poster series for the Archipelles...
Kids House
For Inwayi Kids House in Ningbo City, China, designer Nono Xia of graphic design studio Ninemix cam...
Origami envelopes
Origami Envelopes have a special place in Japanese gift-giving culture. The four envelopes here rep...
Les Concerts du mercredi
The idea of Swiss based graphic design practice We Play Design for these posters for Les Concerts du...
Tatsuo Miyajima: Being Coming
Although this is for an exhibition of Japanese contemporary artist Tatsuo Miyajima at Shanghai Minsh...
Yokohama Museum of Art Calendar
Graphic designers Aizawa office from Yokohama designed this wall calendar. With its unassuming but a...
Pulp Fiction
A selection of American and Mexican Pulp Fiction covers from the nineteen-forties.
Synthetic Paradise
Generative music combined with abstract graphics. Click the screen to generate new graphics: https:/...
Back in the USSR
Great retro logos from the old USSR, and a Beatles song. https://soundcloud.com/thebeatlesrevisited...
Faces by 田中 一光 Ikko Tanaka
Inspired by the Bauhaus, by Jazz and by American graphic design, Ikko Tanaka (1930-2002) was one of ...
penccil
Concept, branding, design and coding of penccil, the site for creative people, studios and gallerie...
Pattern generator
A generator for tile and fabric patterns. Drag and drop images and see kaleidoscopic patterns emerge...
The Venice Pavillon
The Venice Pavillon interprets the history of Venice as a point of contact between West and East. Sh...
Cognition
This experiment looks at the process of human cognition. Letters get progressively filled with color...
Writing & Design
Bohemian Crossroads: Art & Culture Collide Then Subside. Writer and Designer.
Writing & Design
Bohemian Highways: Abide Then Divide Along the California Coast. Writer and Designer.
Writing & Design
Horizon Homes: Living a Concrete Dream. Writer and Designer, Ted Wells.
Writing & Design
Artists Abroad: A Woman´s Journey to Discover the Artists. Writer and Illustrator.
Writing & Design
Bohemian Bridges: California as a Superstructure for Social and Cultural Change. Writer and Designer...
WRECK--Regeneration Experiment of Wasted Daily-use Ceramics from Chaozhou, China
WRECK, the destruction of decorum, the ruin of culture. BENTU went deep into daily-use ceramics indu...
Multifunctional tableware
Inspired by the culture, cuisine and hospitality of the ancient silk road, this ceramics series cons...
Exiled from Truth: Nine Allegories by Dmitry Borshch
"Exiled from Truth: Nine Allegories by Dmitry Borshch" 105 NY-110, Melville, NY 11747 July 10, 11 a...
The Joys of Ice Skating
That skating 400 years ago was one of the most popular winter activities in the Netherlands can be s...
Cutting the edges
Arctic Paper launches new swatch books for the brands Arctic, Amber and G-Print, as well as the two ...
The pattern of You
Each name results in a unique pattern. The pattern and colors created are unique to each name, and t...
We Ar
University of Sunderland MA Glass and Ceramics Show
Maurice Binder
Maurice Binder was a film title designer best known for his work on 14 James Bond films including th...
Neverending Graphics
Graphics and animations are generated on the fly, resulting in perpetual variations. Move your mouse...
Le Drugstore Brand Identity
Design&Practice designed the brand identity for the newly opened restaurant "Le Drugstore," with int...