The wonder of hue
The holiday retreat of Milan-based pilates teacher and design collector, Annamaria Enselmi, which she shares with her aerospace engineer-turnedfinancier husband Claudio and her two children, Pietro and Franco, is an ode to one of her favourite designers Ettore Sottsass. The use of colour as a means to conjure emotions and memories was central to Sottsass’s work. In the small seaside town of Castro Marina in Italy's Puglia region, Enselmi — with the help of Lella Valtorta, the founder of the Milan gallery Dilmos — has evoked the sensorial energy of her design hero in a rainbow of fresh, joy-inducing hues.
Here, we talk to Enselmi about the two-year renovation of her 350-square-metre, five-bedroom home away from home, which was built at the turn of the 20th century, and her newest venture, Palazzo Luce, a seven-suite boutique hotel and design and art gallery in the nearby city of Lecce, which is scheduled to open, Covid-19 permitting, this June.
I was a little girl when I forced my dad to buy me interiors magazines.
I cut out the pieces I liked and studied the origin, the eras and the designers. Gio Ponti was my first true love. I have been collecting design since I was a teenager. The common thread in everything I do is the passion to create beauty around me, for myself and my family.
At this time in my life I’ve dedicated myself to design and art.
Even though I love dance and pilates, I am continuously researching design. I listen and learn from anyone who has something to teach me — and I learn quickly. I learned a lot from my ex-mother-in-law about finding beautiful houses in unique places and furnishings that are never predictable or banal.
The link with Puglia has always been present in my life.
I was born in Turin but my parents are from Puglia and Basilicata. I moved to Milan to study communication science and now I own several houses [in addition to her holiday home in Puglia, Enselmi owns three apartments in Milan] because I love them all as spaces for my design collection. The house where I live with my husband in Milan, for example, features pieces ranging from contemporary design to the Bauhaus era. It’s a very large, bright space and almost New York-like with metal beams and optical white walls.
I found this house in Castro Marina seven years ago and it struck me because inside it felt like being on a two-storey ship overlooking the sea.
An almost fairytale-like ancient staircase made it all very romantic. I called it Villa Jolanda after the name of its previous owner, a wonderful woman who organised dance parties in the 1960s and '70s. She had a ballroom tiled in blue ceramic, a real ‘rotunda on the sea’, just like the song by Fred Bongusto from that same era.
I like to call this a joyful house.
It brings together everything I have always loved — furnishings, colours and material choices all follow a mood completely free from the diktat of perfect matching. Our idea is that what we really love will never clash, it will never be out of place — quite the opposite — so we furnished and decorated the house trusting our instincts.
Castro is a wonderful fishing village.
The thing I love most is in the evening when all the boats have returned and people are at home or in restaurants and we go down to the port to stroll.
The interiors of this house are dedicated to Ettore Sottsass, another great love of my life.
I still remember when I moved to Milan for university and took up my home in via Pontaccio, 19.
I saw Sottsass himself and I almost fainted — he lived right there! The first piece of design I bought at the age of 17 was the Carlton room divider by Sottsass — pure colour and pure magic. I am very attached to that first purchase, which then introduced me to the Memphis Group movement of which Sottsass, together with other important designers, was a part.
Colour reigns supreme for me in this home
and as Sottsass himself said, “…colour, unlike words, is not an artificial invention but the cosmos itself and colour is ‘attached’ to the cosmos, to planetary nature, it is the history of the cosmos and of nature…”
My bedroom features some of my favourite designers:
the Campana brothers and their Favela bed for Edra and Michael Graves’s Plaza dressing table and stool, a true icon of the ’80s. Elsewhere I have contemporary pieces like Ron Gilad’s mirrors and, in a nod to the modern Italian style of the 1950s, a beautiful table by Ico Parisi and a bookcase by Ignazio Gardella.
My next project is Palazzo Luce,
a new boutique hotel and design gallery I am creating in an incredible Baroque building in Lecce, which was once home to the King of Naples, Ladislaus the Magnanimous, and his queen, Maria d’Enghien. It is a wonderful adventure for me. The idea was conceived four years ago quite suddenly and unexpectedly. Initially I wanted to create a space where I could keep all the design pieces I’ve collected over the years. It eventually became an art and design project where some artists and designers — who are now friends — have left a wonderful mark, a dedication to my love for art.
My love of design and art is my essence
— it’s what I will eventually leave of myself. I’ve made my passion for design an infinite romantic love story with the pieces that I take care of every day as if they were children and from which I would never want to part with. @annaenselmi @valtortalella dilmos.it
“Our idea is that what we love will never clash, it will never be out of place — quite the opposite — so we furnished trusting our instincts”
ANNAMARIA ENSELMI