Piero Fornasetti Astronomici Porcelain Plate, Armillary Sphere and Twelve Winds

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Description

Piero Fornasetti Astronomici Pottery Plate, Armillary Sphere and Twelve Winds, Circa 1955–1960

This plate is from Piero Fornasetti’s Astronomici series, … Read more Piero Fornasetti Astronomici Pottery Plate, Armillary Sphere and Twelve Winds, Circa 1955–1960

This plate is from Piero Fornasetti’s Astronomici series, a set of twelve designs created in 1955 after early cosmographical engravings, made at a time when astronomy and astrology were still thought of as one science. The design is titled Case delli 12 Venti Collocati Secondo la Sphera ("Houses of the Twelve Winds Arranged According to the Sphere"). At the center an armillary sphere carries the band of the zodiac, printed in crisp black lithographic transfer with the rings of the sphere hand-heightened in burnished gold. Around it the twelve classical winds appear as cherub heads blowing from clouds, each named in italic script: Favonio, Zefiro, Africo, Austro, Circio, Coro, Borea, Aquilone, Volturno, Susiolano, Euro, and Noto. Small stars fill the outer border between the wind compartments, which are divided by gilt bars.

The reverse is printed in black with the Fornasetti hand-and-paintbrush device above "FORNASETTI MILANO / MADE IN ITALY." There is no series number or pattern cartouche, which places the plate in the earliest period of production, before the atelier adopted the numbered Astronomici backstamp.

Condition is excellent, the transfer crisp and the gilding bright, with a small kiln adhesion spot to the reverse that is an original firing flaw. The black-and-gold palette makes it easy to place: it hangs well on its own, works as part of a wall grouping with other Fornasetti plates, or sits on a stand on a bookshelf or console.

Piero Fornasetti (1913–1988) built his decorative vocabulary on found imagery, drawing on Renaissance and Baroque printed sources for suns, moons, zodiacs, and instruments of celestial measurement. The Astronomici plates of 1955 are among the purest expressions of that method, and the series remains one of the most sought-after of his lifetime productions. The complete set of twelve is illustrated in Patrick Mauriès, Fornasetti: Designer of Dreams, p. 220, and in Barnaba Fornasetti, Fornasetti: The Complete Universe, p. 614, no. 162.

Dimensions
Diameter: 10¼ inches (26 cm)
Height: 1 inch (2.5 cm)

Provenance
Earle D. Vandekar of Knightsbridge

(Ref: NY11210-crr) See less