Piero Fornasetti was a master of the decorative imagination. He employed illusionism, architectural perspectives and a host of personal leitmotifs - the sun, playing cards, still lifes, libraries, harlequins, newspapers, the face of a once-famous opera singer - in seemingly endless variations on plates, chairs, desks, screens, scarves, cabinets and decorative objects of every kind. As Gio Ponti, his friend and collaborator said: 'he makes objects speak.'

Fornasetti's oeuvre is celebrated here in a publication that marks him out as a virtuoso conjurer of dream and illusion. Captured in paintings, drawings and photographs from the family and studio archives, Fornasetti's designs testify to a unique imaginative genius.