A designer and his muse: Piero Fornasetti and Lina Cavalieri

Here is something I've been fixated with for the last while. Throughout the 20th century, Italian designer Piero Fornasetti used the same face as the template for more than three-hundred and fifty designs which are instantly recognizable as his work. The iconic designs were transferred to everyday items such as dinner plates. Below, you'll see just a few examples of these designs, which I'm drawn to for their whimsy and imagination.

They're just wonderful!

The 19th century Italian opera singer Lina Cavalieri served as Fornasetti's muse after he encountered her image in an old French magazine. 

From the Fornasetti site, we learn Fornasetti's reasoning with keeping Cavalieri's face as his template for so many designs.

Lina Cavalieri’s face, explained Piero Fornasetti, was another archetype – a quintessentially beautiful and classic image, like a Greek statue, enigmatic like the ‘Gioconda’ and therefore able to take shape into the idea that was slowly building in his mind. It was this formal, graphic appeal (rather than Lina Cavalieri’s celebrity) that demanded such loyalty and inspired the spontaneous and ceaseless creativity of Fornasetti. For him, this face became the ultimate enduring motif.

And to see photographs of her, who could question him?

Hers is a beauty not easily forgotten. (And those clothes!!)