Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic In design circles, the abundantly romantic rooms of Renzo Mongiardino still retain the power to ignite something close to aesthetic fervour. Born in 1916, the Genoese architect (who studied in Milan alongside Gio Ponti) first established a career in set-making; he then applied the tools of the stage and screen to interiors for an international roll call of clients that included the Rothschilds and the Hearsts, Valentino and Versace. It’s a testament to their timeless appeal that, more than 25 years after his death, a remarkable number of Mongiardino’s residences remain intact. The lion’s share are in Italy, a place where continuity trumps desire for change. “He was all about craftsmanship,” says Martina Mondadori, the editor-in-chief and founder of interiors magazine Cabana. Her late mother, Paola Zanussi, was a close friend of Mongiardino’s and in the 1970s commissioned him to create her perfectly formed apartment in the historical centre of Milan. Today, Mondadori is preparing to open the entirely preserved home, known as Casa Cabana, to the public for the first time. For the Salone del Mobile in April, the apartment will host an exhibition of newly commissioned artist-made objects and furniture. “The intention is to create a vibrant dialogue between the pieces and the place,” says Mondadori of the show that is being curated by the upstate New York-based writer, basket weaver and veteran magazine editor Deborah Needleman. It is a chance to spotlight hand-craft skills — and also to reassess Mongiardino’s virtuoso style through the prism of contemporary practitioners. “Mongiardino used the apartment as a place to experiment with decorative techniques,” says Mondadori, likening the devoted troupe of artisans who followed him across the world, from project to project, to a Renaissance-style bottega, where craft skills were handed down from master to apprentice. “This deep connection to the artisans meant that his houses were all very different from one another.” Instead of buying fabrics or wall coverings by the metre, he would commission entirely bespoke decor — much to the financial frustration of clients. At Casa Cabana, the space is layered with the handmade and intricately imagined details for which Mongiardino is so revered. The sitting room’s botanical wall panels were hand-painted by the postwar Italian artist Romolo Paganelli, in a motif informed by the altarpiece of a 17th-century Milanese church. The room’s faux marble fireplace is assiduously rendered from reverse painted glass. In what was once a long featureless corridor, an enfilade of faux marquetry archways creates a series of small, all-encompassing spaces. For both Mondadori and Needleman — who have been friends for close to a decade — these painterly effects are less of an attempt at trompe l’oeil trickery, more of an entreaty to look closer and appreciate the artistry. “It’s such a complete world,” says Needleman. “Every surface, every object, every texture has been really thought through and resolved in a way that’s about as close to perfect as any place I’ve ever seen.” As an exhibition space, it’s the antithesis of a white-walled gallery. Therein lies both the charm and the greatest challenge: how to integrate new site-specific works within this wholly conceived wunderkammer. First-time curator Needleman’s solution was to pull together a group of seven artists whose reverence for materials and research-led practice is simpatico with Mongiardino’s. There are ceramics by Peter Schlesinger and Sophie Wilson; leatherwork by South Korean artisan Dahyeon Yoo; and from British artist Sophie Coryndon, a series of finely carved, cast and gilded butterfly sculptures. Employing a gold-work technique that imitates the gilt embroidery of ecclesiastical robes, they will be set against the apartment’s pietra dura walls.“When I first met Sophie, she told me that as a craftsperson, you don’t do it to make a living, you do it to make a life,” says Needleman. It’s a sentiment mirrored in Needleman’s own move into making, which began in 2016 after seeing a film featuring the East Sussex-based basket weaver Annemarie O’Sullivan. “It hit me like a lightning bolt,” she says. “This is the life I want.”The show’s title, Speak, Memory: A Conversation Across Time, borrows from the memoirs of Vladimir Nabokov, which conjure his childhood in Tsarist Russia. “To me, he was expressing through prose what Mongiardino expresses through space,” says Needleman. “They are both poetic acts of imagination that can dissolve our sense of time as linear. When you’re in the apartment you could be in the 19th or the 20th century.” It’s this sense of disorientation that Needleman hopes to amplify. “If people walk in and feel as though they don’t know where they are, I’ll be happy,” she says. Another exhibitor is the Los Angeles sculptor James Cherry, whose ethereal, organic lighting is forged from a beguiling array of materials, from twigs foraged from the forest floor to recycled fabric, all treated with a specially developed resin recipe. These will be displayed alongside furniture from Green River Project, the dynamic, art-led American duo of Aaron Aujla and Ben Bloomstein, who have conceived a sofa, armchairs and coffee table with the same visual sorcery favoured by Mongiardino. What looks like burr is in fact plywood, treated with a complex, if-DIY, oxidation process involving rusty metals, workshop debris, tea stains and sunlight. All their designs are accessorised with cushions and textiles contributed by Aujla’s wife, Emily Bode, of the fashion line, Bode. For Mondadori — whose mother lived in the Milan apartment until her death in 2021 — the show is particularly poignant. It was only after moving away from her childhood home to England that she really understood the beauty of this intensely personal place. “It planted the first seeds of Cabana,” she says of the print publication, which has grown since its 2014 inception into a homeware brand offering decorative objects, furniture, antiques and books. The collection ranges from Argentine tablecloths and Umbrian dinner plates to ornate Louis XIII bronze candelabras — all reflecting Mondadori’s taste for the worldly, folkish, historic, and richly adorned. Her aesthetic has evolved into a formidable force within the world of design. The exhibition also highlights Cabana’s next act: the development of The Atlas of Craftsmanship, a global directory of artisan makers — working in everything from ceramics to leather to weaving to woodwork — and a decorative arts compendium. “Every object has a story to tell,” says Mondadori of her craft-led mission to illuminate often anonymous creations — pieces whose significance stretches beyond the aesthetic to ignite a cross-pollination of traditions and cultures. “When objects travel, ideas travel too,” she adds.Back in Milan during Design Week, when the city takes on the atmosphere of one big village, Casa Cabana’s unveiling promises to be enacted with a generous air of Milanese informality. “If you want to sit on the sofa,” says Mondadori, “please, go ahead — make yourself comfortable.”Speak, Memory: A Conversation across Time; April 9-11. Booking opens at 9am CET on March 29 at cabanamagazine.comFind out about our latest stories first — follow @ft_houseandhome on Instagram
