Italian leather sofas: atmosphere of past ages

An Italian leather sofa can be the absolute protagonist of a sitting room, simply by definition. Or better: the sofa IS the sitting room, it has the right to be.

The very concept of sitting room was born from leather sofas: well, maybe is not a historically correct statement but it's very real in the collective imagination.

Especially if we think about those places, smoky and blurred but just for that deeply fascinating, that gave life to our modern sitting rooms. In the past, sitting rooms where elected places, where people met to talk, create and breathe art. A meeting place for people who would, in the future, become famous.

That was the 18th century, but also the 19th century. Inside sitting rooms History was written and revolutions were planned: like the French Revolution in 1789 or the Neapolitan one, in 1799, less well known but still extremely radical.

Inside sitting rooms new ways of life were created: in sitting rooms people were smoking, creating a new trend, playing and wearing clothes that would soon become fashion.

Inside sitting rooms poems were written; songs and music were composed and heard. And the people there, comfortably seated on those sofas (maybe made of leather) enjoyed those musics directly from the hands of famous artists. And I'm talking about Rossini, Mozart, Verdi.

Inside sitting rooms stories and backgrounds took place; events that maybe you can't find nowadays in books, but that shocked whole lives and souls: how many relationships, meetings, crossing of paths... Sitting rooms were the social life of that time, the only entertainment available, sitting rooms were freedom.

I can see them, can't you? Mysterious characters plotting against each other, or funny ones that laugh, read poems behind a light smoke screen, sitting on a Diamond sofa with black leather cover (without chromed steel feet obviously!) with its imposing presence and its lived and almost unkempt leather.

I can hear the notes of "Péchés de vieillesse" coming from the fingers of an old Rossini, in his home near Paris, while I'm seating on a Chester tufted leather sofa.

And finally, I'm picturing Eleonora Pimentel Fonseca and Francesco Caracciolo, writing the manifest of the Neapolitan Revolution, while seating on the Temple sofa with reclining headrest.

Don't you think that these sofas are able to recall another world? Another atmosphere, way different from your usual sitting room? Can't you smell the same freedom, social life, history of those times, just by possessing a sofa like that?

Modern Italian rugs and carpets: tradition meets creativity

Rugs come from a charming and glorious yet cultural distant past. However, during the centuries, they were able to adapt themselves to a more modern way of life and above all to a contemporary western style: modern Italian rugs can be part of a category on their own, far away from traditional or oriental rugs and carpets.

Rugs were born for two main purposes: to warm and to decorate. There are several types of rugs and carpets and we can distinguish them according to their material, manufacturing process, shape, measures and of course according to their decorations and colours. Rugs are nowadays part of an extremely variegated world where it's practically impossible to categorize them into easily recognizable symbols : modern Italian rugs and carpets are born from the pure imagination of their creators and from the functionality that the modern techniques can give them.

These modern Italian rugs are even more charming with big measures, able in this way to attract the look of everybody, even more that other furniture pieces that usually have more importance.

The rug has to be placed in a strategic position according to its role; for example, if we want a rug to give importance to the surrounding environment we will wisely choose the colours and patterns we wish to match with the furniture, enriching in this way rooms that would otherwise appear rather featureless.

So let's boldly use modern rugs and carpets: under the dining room table, in the middle of the sitting room, in the play area of the kids room, to brighten up the hall or in the bedroom in front of the bed. The whole house will be, in this way, decorated with a easily recognizable link, giving at the same time a high impact effect.

Butterfly inlaid rug, ideal both for the living room and the kids bedroom. Its huge images (the important is not to cover the rug with too many furniture pieces!) remind the pattern of those Romans mosaic used as floors in their splendid villas.

Carré viscose and wool rug is perfect for every kind of environments, even under the dining table, and can give character to every bare room.

Dalia square rug by Calligaris reminds the tradition of floral patterns, born centuries ago, but designed in strongly contemporary way and able to characterize with its strong visual impact a whole environment.

Chic rug with shaped corner couldn't have a better name, because its charm is really astonishing: the design is realized with three different thicknesses and has an extremely elegant protrusion on a corner; the decoration is in this way not only impressed on the surface but is an integral part of the rug itself becoming a sort of sculpture.

Italian design glass round tables: the Outer Space in your house

Italian design round or oval glass tables define a strong, modern and charming style, thanks to the elegance of their shape and to the lightness that their look can convey.

Suspended into time and in air, design round glass tables seem to come from other worlds, where dimensions are not just 3, nor 2 or 4, as imagined in that brilliant book called "Flatland". Design round glass tables come from a fifth dimension made of plastic and lightness, made of magical transparencies.

Round shapes invite the eye to enjoy perfect lines and conviviality; infact, a round or oval table allows all the guests to chat face to face while no one prevails on the other. In the end that was the idea of King Arthur's Round Table, where everyone is the same.

Round shapes also recall peculiar chairs, a field where design gives life every day, as it did in the past, to unique and unforgettable items, particular and extremely beautiful. In this way imagination can roam free and create every kind of combinations.

Round shapes can infuse new life to a room that has been neglected for a very long time: the dining room. Nowadays dining rooms are always hidden in the darkest corners of a house, sacrificed in the name of the lack of space.

However, if we take a look at a table with another world characteristics, we can really decide to make a beautiful and shining dining room, maybe sacrificing some other room like the bedroom.

What brings us up to another dimension is the glass transparency: infact it helps us notice the waves and designs of peculiar legs, as in the Don Juan table with its spectacular base made of Vicenza Stone and characterized by a shape reminding a spurt of water turned into stone. The transparency gives a sensation of unbearable lightness of being, that feeling of perfection and harmony.

Have a look at Coral oval elegant table: doesn't it look like coming from Outer Space? Its legs in white (or black) lacquered polyurethane look like antennas belonging to some kind of superior being while the glass top with sandblasted shape is a perfect elegant dress falling on those charming legs.

Adjustable Satellite table with round top has a name that strongly points at its outer space origin: the metal base and the lacquered leg, increase the sensation of light, perfection and unknown brightness.

Finally, what can we say about the extraordinary Barone round glass table? Its sabre legs, in the chromed version, remind crossed swords chasing each other. The legs, together with the glass top and the perfect round shape, make Barone round table shiny, unreachable, infallible.

Tables came to the earth inside spaceships made of genius and taste, design and resistant materials. Tables ready for everything.

Dining Room with a gothic and kitsch style

Furnishing a kitsch dining room, with Gothic and Noir tones, is not for everybody. You need a great deal of conviction, character and firmness, because a style like that can be misunderstood. Kitsch style is, infact, only for the people who know how to wear it; as a dress, as an attitude or as a posture. But it can, at the same time, generate intense feelings, sometimes even contrasting, but utterly and terribly strong. Because that's what it does, it plays with opposites and defies vanity.

A kitsch and Gothic style brings the shadows of the past in its shapes, it meets with the modernity of the materials and, in some particular decorations, it comes along with an extreme feminism that excludes the masculine taste and merges with the fascination for dark colours, mystery and an ironic horror. Do you remember the Addams Family?

Well in this kind of style there's a little bit of Morticia, but also a little bit of Audrey Hepburn, thanks to necessary frippery, a strong pictorial elegance and a little bit of sense of humour. Do you want to know what I'm talking about? Do you want to SEE what I'm talking about? Very well, here we go.

A dining room is perfect for this kind of stylistic interpretations, eccentric and out of the ordinary: it's an extremely hybrid zone, often lost between the kitchen, the living room and sitting room, confused inside an open space, hidden in a narrow corner. But with the help of a strong style, as the one we're talking about, it can easily become the protagonist of your house.

So, here it is the main character of a feminine dining room, defined by a quite classical verve, a luxury atmosphere and a touch of "noir". We can compare it to a black widow, eager and vengeful: that's the Cleo sideboard with Swarovski handles and pink ice dream fronts. Just imagine it together with a silver frame and a black chandelier, completing, in this way, the mystery of your dining room.

Another protagonist of a kitsch style dining room are the chairs: with high big backs, that almost give you a sort of reverential awe coming from past ages, or also with a round, oval shape like those frames used in the past to frame old pictures.

Vanilla upholstered chair in steel and leather, with a strong black colour, would be perfect as a throne contrasting the pink colour of the sideboard.

Berta chair from Louis XVI collection in beech solid wood clearly reminds, thanks to the name and material, the period of time stated by its name but not in a strictly way; infact the classic lines are combined with modern decorations and colours, perfectly suitable for a Gothic-kitsch style.

Last but not least, we need a design table, even if in this case it will merely act as a background. For this reason it will be characterized by simple and regular lines, but with one certain detail: it has to be black. Monday Big table with glass top , for example, would be the ideal choice.

Storage unit modular elements: one function, thousand styles

Modular Storage Units are the true house furniture pieces, specifically born to create your home furniture, to make your rooms a neat and functional place. Because in the end that's the reason why furniture pieces were created in the down of time: hold objects.

If you happen to come upon some multi functional piece of furniture, characterized by a single soul but several lives, you will notice right away that I'm talking about something completely different, I'd say opposite: several shapes, several styles, several different furniture with the only fundamental function of holding stuff, everyday objects, precious objects, memories, useful objects.

Everything in a house has to be "held" somewhere, with the exception of some rare, well studied cases when we want to show our stuff. Tableware, linen, clothes, technological objects, books, accessories, shoes, all we have in our house has to be contained in a storage unit.

Wardrobes, dressers, modular elements are furniture pieces that can hold a lot of objects. But they're not the only one, we also have other characters, maybe smaller, maybe quieter, but that can hide a huge attraction: I'm talking about wall units, drawer chests, benches. Elements that can usually be found in the busiest room of the house: the living room.

Let's have a look for example at the Inbox Square wall units by Calligaris that, thanks to the versatility of their colours and their extreme modularity can really face every kind of needs and give life to unprecedented aesthetic shapes acting like the real protagonists of your environments.

Trequarti wall storage unit is another storage unit that immediately catches the eye, thanks to the light asymmetry of its shape, also reminded by the name (Trequarti means three-fourths in Italian).

Inbox drawer chest by Calligaris is, on the other end, one of those modular elements that usually pass unnoticed, but that can give a touch of elegance and charm to a more attentive eye.