Renzo Mongiardino was beyond an interior designer he was a decorative master! He specialized in the uttermost faux finishes and grand facades that he learned early on as a set designer. Renzo stated, “Illusion comes into being as part of the pleasure,” he wrote in Roomscapes, a treatise on his specialty, which he preferred to call “decorative architecture.” The same painters, carpenters, gilders and model makers who manufactured Mongiardino’s sets for stage and screen worked on the maestro’s interiors as well (including Lila de Nobili, a painter and designer whose work in the Italian theater world was every bit as revered as his own).Renzo went so far as to take Sicilian Scarves, lacquer them, then delicately enrich them with floral over painting as in the English home of Lee and Stas Radziwill.Renzo’s interiors invoke romanticism and history with an alluring touch of the theatrics! I think we have so much to learn from the amazing late designer. Renzo Mongairdino! To really appreciate and learn all there to designing as an art form, be sure to get Renzo’s book-“Roomscapes The Decorative Architecture of Renzo Mongiardino".
Credits: Architectural Digest, Pinterest, and Indecorous Taste, Giutzy.
