8 Piero Fornasetti Astrolabio Porcelain Plates circa 1970

Piero Fornasetti (1913-1988) lived and worked in Milano and he was very fond of science. This series normally is composed of 12 designs about astrolabe or "Astrolabos" in Greece which was historically used by astronomers. Black prints with gold come to a fantastic result, extremely decorative.

In 1940 he met Gio Ponti, a very famous architect and designer and they will become very close doing many decorations
He produced very refined and limited edition graphic works in his atelier "the design and decorative arts" 
His artistic approach is eclectic. His mind open to all cultural, scientific, mystical themes, ancient cartographies and scholarly treatises on astrology leaves part to extraordinary, unbridled creativity.
His drawings of fantastic architectures, ruins, games, characters are always a new discovery, and this most famous portrait of Lina Cavalieri, an opera singer of whom he has made more than 350 metamorphoses since its creation in 1952.

An important retrospective of his work took place in 2013, it went from Milano to Paris's "Arts Décoratifs" major museum to be seen once in a life and even to Seoul.

Reference: Maruccia Casadio, Fornasetti : The complete Universe, New York, Éditions Rizzoli, 2010