Fornasetti ‘Città Di Carte’ House of Cards Side Table the Top Dated 1990, Numbered 4/6 Atelier Fornasetti, Milan, After a Design by Piero Fornasetti

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Fornasetti ‘Città di Carte’ House of Cards Side Table
The top dated 1990, numbered 4/6
Atelier Fornasetti, Milan, after a … Read more Fornasetti ‘Città di Carte’ House of Cards Side Table
The top dated 1990, numbered 4/6
Atelier Fornasetti, Milan, after a design by Piero Fornasetti

The circular top of this table is decorated with the design Fornasetti called Città di Carte, the City of Cards, and known in the trade as the House of Cards. An entire citadel has been raised out of playing cards and stands in an open plain: a great tiered wall at the center flanked by two slender towers of stacked cards, ranks of pitched-roofed card houses below and to the left, and a further group of card buildings away to the right in the middle distance. Kings and queens stand within the ramparts as though they were the inhabitants. Behind rises a range of snow-capped mountains, and above it a heavy clouded sky.

The whole is printed in the fine engraved hatching characteristic of Fornasetti, in black and hand-colored in soft browns, greens, and blues, the suit marks picked out in strong red and black so that the eye reads the architecture as cards even at a distance. In the left foreground a scatter of torn and fallen cards makes the point of the subject: the city is magnificent and it is already coming down.

The top is now mounted on a custom-made Lucite base of three splayed and gently swept legs joined by a shaped stretcher, which lifts the design clear and lets it read as the object it is. Beneath the top is the original printed paper care label of the firm.

This is a piece that will hold a room on its own. Set it beside a sofa or between a pair of chairs as a drinks table, use it in an entry where people will look down at it, or stand it in a bedroom or a study as a lamp table with the design left clear. The Lucite base keeps it visually weightless, so it works in a spare modern interior as readily as against velvet and mahogany, and it is the natural companion to other Fornasetti pieces. One of an edition of six, dated and signed beneath, so it is a decorating object and a collector’s one at the same time.

Dimensions
Height: 27 inches (68.6 cm)
Diameter: 23¾ inches (60.3 cm)

Marks
Printed within the design on one of the cards with the hand-and-paintbrush device above FORNASETTI · MILANO / MADE IN ITALY, and inscribed beneath in manuscript, numbered 4/6 and dated ’90, with a signature. Beneath the top, the original printed paper care label of the firm, noting that the product is warm-water and alcohol-proof and recommending occasional polishing to preserve its brightness, above FORNASETTI · MILANO / MADE IN ITALY.

Provenance
Earle D. Vandekar of Knightsbridge.

Condition
Good condition. The printed and colored top is bright and unrubbed, with light surface scratching and handling marks to the black-painted edge and underside. The Lucite base, of later manufacture, shows minor surface scratching consistent with use. The original paper label is present, with small losses.

References
Fornasetti, Barnaba, Mariuccia Casadio, and Andrea Branzi. Fornasetti: The Complete Universe. New York: Rizzoli, 2010, page 384, number 142, for an example of the Città di Carte top, originally produced in the 1950s.

Historical Context
Playing cards were among the subjects Piero Fornasetti (1913–1988) returned to throughout his career, alongside the sun, the harlequin, hands, and the face of Lina Cavalieri, and the City of Cards is the most architecturally ambitious of them. The design was first produced in the 1950s and was issued on trays, tables, screens, and cabinets across the following decades.

Piero Fornasetti died in 1988, and the workshop has been continued since by his son Barnaba under the Atelier Fornasetti name, reissuing the historic designs in small numbered editions. The present top belongs to that later production: it is dated 1990, numbered four of six, and signed in manuscript beneath the printed mark, so that it is at once a Piero Fornasetti design and an Atelier Fornasetti object.

Ref: NY11207-icrr See less