Mattia Bonetti’s Fanciful Designs Showcased in a New Book

Just in time for Masterpiece London and its annual mix of priceless antiques and splendid contemporary art, the Swiss­-born, Paris­-based designer Mattia Bonetti has published a two-volume book that offers a comprehensive look at the fanciful and decadent furniture, lighting and textiles that have defined his decades­-long career.

The 640­-page monograph—simply titled Mattia Bonetti (Éditions Louvre Victoire, $90) and released in London earlier this week at David Gill Gallery—is written in both French and English by Jacqueline du Pasquier, who focuses on Bonetti’s early career in Volume 1, and Jean­-Jacques Wattel, who zooms in on the designer’s later works in Volume 2.

Bonetti got his start in textiles and later worked as a photographer and stylist before turning his eye to furniture design in the early 1980s. The various stages of his career are all examined in the new tome through a series of photographs, essays, and sketches that reveal Bonetti’s talent for transforming freehand drawings into whimsical, real­-world creations, which feature in the permanent collections of the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Cooper­-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York.

“The purpose is to show and analyze the originality of the fabricated worlds that Mattia Bonetti creates or proposes, as much in his many home projects as in the furniture created for various international galleries,” says Wattel. “All are testament to the unswerving, ever-­growing enthusiasm that he has for his creations.”