The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - The Telegraph Magazine
A London town house filled with ancient art
Her home may be in London but the colours and marbles within – not to mention the Roman mosaics – are strictly Italian. Talib Choudhry pays a visit to publishing heiress and founder of Cabana, Martina Mondadori Sartogo. Photographs by Michael Sinclair
‘I can’t live without colour ,’ says Martin a Mondador iS ar togo as she gives meat our of the handsome chelsea town house she shares with her husband, Peter Sartogo, a financier, and their three young children( leonardo, nine, tancredi,s even, and sixmonth-old cosima). ‘visitors often say things like “this house is so Italian” or “the colours you’ve used look as if they’ve come from a fresco”, but I didn’t think about that when I was choosing paint. It was completely subconscious. It’s just a part of who I am.’
Many of the rooms have been painted a warm tobacco colour (‘like most palazzi in Bologna’) and the walls of the elegant dining room are daubed with ‘ Pompeian re d’. this earthy palette makes even the huge first-floor sitting room feel cosy and inviting, although the convivial air has as much to do with the lady of the house (a drink in a Murano glass tumbler is pr offered immediately) as the paint choices.
Mondadori Sartogo is the scion of an Italian dynasty that combined the great fortunes of the publisher Mondadori and industrial giant Zanussi. Her late father leonardo ‘was a collector of very eclectic things’ including ancient Roman mosaics (a section of a vivid frieze hangs in the sitting room) and old master Impressionist drawings (studies by Degas and Goya are dotted about the house).
‘Growing up in Italy surrounded by so many beautiful objects gave me a passion for the history of art,’ says Mondadori Sartogo, ‘My father’s love of collecting has stayed with me, too. I often
Right In the sitting room the sofa is covered in a Jim Thompson fabric; the velvet pouffes, based on a Renzo Mongiardino design, are part of the Cabana collection; and the coffee table is a repurposed 17th-century fountain.
Far right In the library, a circa-1953 Gio Ponti chest of drawers from the Nilufar Gallery in Milan is used to store Mondadori Sartogo’s collection of vintage fabrics. The chairs are a Frank Gehry design and the vintage suzani draped over the sofa arm was found in Istanbul
travelled with him to exhibitions and galleries around the world.’
These father-daughter jaunts included regular trips to New York where they stayed in an apartment at the Carlyle hotel and dined with the likes of Tom Wolfe and Jacqueline Kennedy. In some ways it was a home from home; the Carlyle’s sumptuous restaurant was decorated by the legendary interior designer Renzo Mongiardino, who also furnished the family ’s home in Milan where Mondadori matriarch Paola still lives.
‘Most of his work was done in the 1970s and ’80s but it had a timeless quality,’ says Mondadori Sartogo. ‘It was highly decorative and very rich with a lot of layering.’
She has taken this bold approach to decorating her own London home, which contains a sophisticated mix of art, antiques and textiles from around the globe. The sitting room, for example, features a Mauritanian straw-andleather rug, Native American art, Guatemalan pots, 1970s sconces by the German designer Ingo Maurer, and seating upholstered in Persian, Ottoman and African textiles.
That it all fits together beautifully is testament to Mondadori Sartogo’s taste and restraint; the house feels curated rather than cluttered and each object
has been thoughtfully selected and positioned just so.
‘Layering patterns is fun for me and I’m always collecting vintage fabrics,’ she says. ‘I don’t know if I’ll ever use them, but looking at them is inspiring. I keep creating mood boards for imaginary rooms I am going to decorate.’
Mondadori Sartogo combined her love of decorating and collecting with her flair for editing by launching the biannual design magazine Cabana three years ago. With its distinctive fabric and wallpaper covers, innovative layouts and esoteric features, it has become cult reading, appearing on the coffee tables of style setters everywhere.
‘The main reason I launched Cabana was that I perceived a shift in taste, in design and fashion – a return to pattern, colour and richness,’ she explains, ‘We almost made ourselves ambassadors for that return to emotional design.’
The Cabana universe is growing rapidly: in addition to the magazine there is a collection of home products (tableware, wallpaper and furniture) sold through the luxury online marketplace 1stdibs.com, and Cabana will soon have its own e-commerce platform.
Mondadori Sartogo has also been commissioned by Airbnb to curate an exhibition, based around the theme of collecting, during the Milan Furniture Fair next week. She has chosen the Casa Degli Atellani as the venue because of its rich history (Leonardo da Vinci lived there while he was working on The Last
Supper) and mix of architectural styles (the Modernist architect Piero Portaluppi transformed large parts of the building during the interwar period).
‘Airbnb is about experiences and houses, so clearly the location was very important,’ she says. ‘Milan is all about hidden treasures – everything is behind closed doors in private houses with courtyards.’
Visitors to Casa Degli Atellani will be afforded a glimpse into the private collections of established designers such as Faye Toogood and Dimore Studio, and Mondadori Sartogo has also selected works by emerging talents, recalling the tradition of patronage in great houses. She collects the work of several of the young designers she has invited to exhibit, including RCA graduate Elinor Portnoy, whose glass vases are inspired by precious stones.
Given her love of decorative objects it comes as a surprise to learn that, as a teenager, Mondadori Sartogo longed to live in a ‘completely white house with nothing in it ’ and that her husband Peter did live in a minimalist white home as a child (his father is the architect Piero Sartogo).
‘My husband comes from a very contemporary design viewpoint but he’s fine with me doing a cosy interior and we’re a good counterbalance for each other,’ she says.
Her favourite room at home is the white-walled conservatory that adjoins the kitchen. ‘It ’s where homework is done, where the children eat, where we have endless Monopoly games on Sundays. It’s where life happens.’