Piero Fornasetti Porcelain Orchestra Pattern Plates With Musical Instruments, Set of 15, Circa 1980

Details

Description

Piero Fornasetti Porcelain Orchestra Pattern Plates with Musical Instruments, Set of 15,
Circa 1980

Fifteen different Piero Fornasetti Orchestra plates … Read more Piero Fornasetti Porcelain Orchestra Pattern Plates with Musical Instruments, Set of 15,
Circa 1980

Fifteen different Piero Fornasetti Orchestra plates in one set is a rare find. Each porcelain plate is printed with its own arrangement of lutes, mandolins, violins, trombones, long trumpets, curved horns, shawms and drums, laid crosswise over one another on a background that mimics the grain of a wooden wall. The engraved outlines are printed in black and the instruments are hand-colored in yellow for brass and red, brown and gray for wood, against a wood grain printed in soft salmon and brown.

Every plate follows the same grid, with the long necks and tubes crossing horizontally and vertically and the rounded bodies of the lutes and viols anchoring the corners, so the set reads as fifteen variations on one theme. Piero Fornasetti (1913–1988) drew his instruments from old engravings and used the printed faux bois ground as a favorite trompe l’oeil device, turning each porcelain plate into a wooden panel on which the instruments appear to hang. The pattern belongs to the same family as his Strumenti Musicali plates of the 1950s, here extended to the whole orchestra of strings, wind, brass and percussion.

Hung in a grid on a dining room or music room wall, the fifteen plates make a single large-scale work of art; three rows of five fills a wall above a sideboard, while smaller groups of four or six suit a stairwell, a powder room or the back of a bar. The salmon, yellow and red palette warms a black-and-white or gray scheme and sits as easily with Italian midcentury furniture as with English mahogany. They are equally at home in use on the table.

Dimensions (each plate):
Diameter: 10 inches (25.4 cm)
Height: 1 inch (2.5 cm)

Marks:
Printed in black on the underside of each plate: the Fornasetti hand-and-brush device above “FORNASETTI · MILANO”; below, a stylized violin scroll and neck whose body forms a cartouche enclosing the series title “ORCHESTRA”, with the plate’s number within the series (the plate illustrated is numbered 2) and “MADE IN ITALY” beneath. A script signature in green enamel is painted across the cartouche, most probably the mark of the painter who applied the colors.

Provenance:
Earle D. Vandekar of Knightsbridge

Condition:
Good. A few plates with slight rubs from stacking. See less