There’s an elegant logic to the fact that Luca Guadagnino, the 51-year-old Italian director of films such as “Call Me by Your Name,” runs a …
There’s an elegant logic to the fact that Luca Guadagnino, the 51-year-old Italian director of films such as “Call Me by Your Name,” runs a design studio. After all, his movies are as much about atmosphere as they are character; to him, objects are also metaphors, whether a marble corridor that stands in for bourgeois restraint or a peach that represents the opposite. His most recent creation, a fireplace, was inspired by its function as the spiritual center of the home. Forgoing traditional materials such as stone and brick, he had Munich’s famed Nymphenburg Porcelain Manufactory fabricate this vivid pastel-hued ceramic hearth, which can be made in different sizes and palettes (he has one in his own country home in the Piemonte region of Italy). “The difference in working with this material versus, say, marble is that you’re not chipping away to see what emerges — you’re building from nothing,” he says. To Guadagnino, the “brash, glossy” rainbow surfaces suggest a dancing flame, though the fireplace is built to withstand real heat. “There may be a little crackling to the finish,” he says, “but I think that’s beautiful. It’s part of the story.” Studio Luca Guadagnino fireplace, price on request, [email protected].
Photo assistant: Martina Giammaria
