The hydrangeas in Ramo di Ortensia grow in the garden of the Fornasetti house in Milan. Piero Fornasetti drew them in the 1950s and used the design on tables and trays for years afterwards. The idea, by the family's account, came from his son Barnaba, who at three brought his father a leaf from the garden with a small daisy resting on it.
The drawing keeps the plant's habit, heavy flower heads on long trailing stems and broad leaves turning at different angles, and lays it out as a sprawling all-over rather than a controlled trail. The Fornasetti manner is flat and graphic, so depth comes from overlap and tonal separation rather than from modelling, and the foliage builds in layers across the wall.
Colour varies the design considerably here, from soft pastel work on a dark ground to sharper high-contrast combinations, but the structure of the drawing holds them all together. An enclosed room takes it well, a study, a dining room, a bedroom hung to the ceiling, where the trails can meet in the corners and the pattern is read as a garden wall rather than as a repeating print. Fornasetti papers reward being taken all the way round a room rather than used on a single wall, since the drawing has no obvious edge.
