Barnaba Fornasetti
Giovanni Bonotto

Barnaba Fornasetti carries on the heritage of one of the most important Italian firms in design and decoration, founded by Piero Fornasetti in the 1940s. It is a name which is internationally known and can boast of a multitude of fans, collectors and enthusiasts. It is synonymous with very great craftsmanship which embraces a refined and talented design, recognizable and full of symbols, allusions, quotations and figures from the imagination. It is a name which immediately refers to a rich visual and an unmistakable language full of imagery between dreams, magic and lyrical realism.

Giovanni Bonotto is the creative director of the large family-run textile firm founded in 1912, currently run by the fourth generation, it has been part of the Ermenegildo Zegna group since 2016. A real gem of creativity and productive expertise: today a vertical industry with a complete cycle, with several production sites and more than two hundred master craftsmen employed, promoting a new way of thinking and producing, based on the concept of a “Slow Factory”. It is a modern vision of work and business, combined with age-old technologies and creative design that is always innovative, and based on a love for contemporary art. The collaboration between these two great creators was met with an instant understanding of each other’s languages. Barnaba’s and Giovanni’s stories are incredibly similar: they are both in favour of slow design, quality that comes before everything else and a world where creativity and dreaming is a philosophy to live and work by. They run two businesses in which craftsmanship itself equates to an ethos for living.