Under the expert guidance of art historian Caterina Napoleone, Paola Lenti made a poetic, inspirational journey – at times oneiric – throughout Italy in search for mosaics of neglected beauty.
Those in very famous archeological sites like Pompeii, but also mosaics hidden in places unknown or little known to the public, worn out by oblivion and the passage of time.
Paola Lenti tracked them down with the meticulousness of a historian and the amazement of a neophyte, in search of inspirations and assonances with the wefts and warps of the weaves and fabrics of her company, which, since the inception, have made up the colourful “mosaics” of its rugs and upholsteries.
The result is a book, l giochi delle Muse (published by Corraini), which reveals the chromatic correspondences between fragments of mosaics and fabric offcuts; the compositional analogies between the floors of ancient patrician domus and hand-sewn decorated rugs; the similarities between the craftsmanship of imperial Rome and the contemporary one of the Meda-based company.
A sort of journey revisiting the art of mosaics that unfolds from North to South – along an imaginary axis that goes from Murano to Brescia, from Oplontis to Piazza Armerina – recomposing, step by step, the tesserae of “stone carpets”, as Caterina Napoleone defines them.
A book to leaf through to discover an invaluable heritage and what continues to make our country unique: craft excellence.
Video © Maurizio Natta, Fabrizio Polla Mattiot