So summer is upon us. While for many that implies planning vacations and booking flights, we’re already tuning into the pleasures of the journey. Time for a fantasy check-in, on our way to a hidden place amidst the wonders of Central America, not yet plotted by Google Maps. The place is our destination for this month’s moodboard, inspired by a song written by Paolo Conte and made famous by Enzo Jannacci, two artists who have made Italian music popular around the world. In our imaginary scenario, however, there is no room for the “sad faces” mentioned in the lyrics. Our colors and our atmosphere celebrate only the joy and beauty of a summer dream.
A mixture of blue and green – with a neutral touch suggesting sand – plays with cool, relaxing tones, like a vacation morning. The landscape is composed of temporary architecture: a rug graphically “mended” with a roof dome and an exaggerated fireplace, generated by the juxtaposition of overturned images and mirrors in the guise of windows. On the facing page, a landscape of cacti becomes the protagonist of a setting en plein air amidst (fake) passing clouds. But these are “contraband situations” – again based on the words to the song – where everything is a pretext. Even the sun, impersonated by a mirror.
The building of our ensemble is not the result of sketches by some starchitect, but of a “cut and paste” operation using the hand-knotted carpet Romanic Wall from the Green Dry Collection designed by Carlo Colombo for the Designers Collection of Sahrai. The same design has created the imaginary “portal” made with the Archi wallpaper by Londonart.
To represent the windows, which nonchalantly ignore standards of construction, we have two specimens of the Primopiano mirror created by Stefano Spessotto for Ditre Italia. At the center, the Eolie cot by Roda, from the new outdoor component collection by Gordon Guillaumier, featuring clean, essential design entirely in FSC certified iroko wood.
The flora we have chosen pays no attention to proportions or scientific names; it is generally cactus-y, but in pure crystal with gold decoration in the sculpture made by hand by Duccio di Segna and in ceramic, created by Tullio Mazzotti for Mazzotti 1903, both for sale on Artemest. To complete the setting, a ladder presents bamboo towels by Bloomingville.
The landscape opens onto a variegated Mexican desert with the panoramic Meiji wallpaper from Coordonné and the Bistrò umbrella in fabric, available in two versions, flat and cupola, produced by Paola Lenti. Succulent, but only apparently, is a term to describe the Filicudi chair created by Marcantonio for Qeeboo, where the form suggests a magical place of vacations and wild nature.
To complete the relaxing corner, the Button outdoor table system by Edward Barber & Jay Osgerby for B&B Italia is available in various sizes, with tops in white Carrara marble and cylindrical bases in rigid polyurethane, painted in five colors. In the (counterfeit) sky, the Nuvola lamp designed by Mario Bellini in 1974, produced with roto-molding by Nemo, and the sun which is actually the Surface mirror from Calligaris.
An unexpected guest, a reptile – Wunderkammer Snake in aluminium by Seletti – pays tribute to the divine feathered serpent of the Maya. The wind things up, a neutral backdrop reminds us of the color of sand: the Flair fabric by Dedar, a substantial weave of linen yarn and the glow of viscose, in vibrant chromatic variations.
