Piero Fornasetti collected obsessively, and cameos were part of it: carved shell and hardstone profiles, the classical portrait reduced to a relief the size of a thumbnail. The motif became one of the atelier's constants, appearing on teacups, trays, screens and, most successfully, on tabletops, where Fornasetti produced variation after variation over several decades.
The wallpaper is an homage to Classicism and behaves like one. The profiles are drawn in the manner of carved relief, with the lighting implied by line rather than by shading, and they are set into a geometric arrangement that gives the design the order of an antiquarian's cabinet. Several periods are folded together, the Roman profile, the Neoclassical frame, the mid-century graphic sensibility, and the mixture is entirely deliberate.
The repeat is 76 cm with a straight match on a 0.52 m roll, so the arrangement squares up cleanly across widths, which a design built on geometry needs. It suits a study, a dining room, a hall or a cloakroom, and it is at its best in an enclosed space where the wall can be met on all sides. Plain stone, dark timber and old brass are the right companions. It is a design to be looked at closely rather than admired from a doorway.
