Who doesn't remember those ‘70s rooms wallpapered with geometric patterns, between delicate and faded, almost afraid to be noticed? Then all of a sudden you come across the wallpaper collection by Murals Wallpaper that transforms the stylized motifs of the most famous building on the Manhattan skyline, the Chrysler Building, into patterns. Or you come across the fairy world of Idarica Gazzoni and then a doubt comes. Wallpaper, or design work?

The need to decorate and adorn the walls of one's own home (even when this was a modest cave) has always been a necessity for man. Since the time of cave paintings, a lot of progress has been made: first the tapestries hung on the walls (typical of the Middle Ages), then the hand-painted paper (widespread in the 20^th century) in a crescendo of popularity that reached its peak in the '70s. Then, at the end of the century, the decline.

Today, wallpaper is cool and trendy again, thanks to names such as the Italian Idarica Gazzoni who, in her scenographic idea of walls, unrolls fantastic flowers, birds, hand-painted cranes arranged on golden leaves ready to illuminate the rooms of the world. Like those of the imaginative Arjumand's world, the world of refined wallpapers and fabrics designed by the Bolognese "designer" who captures the glow of a precious and ancient Asia. It's hard not to call a designer someone who, as she herself says, has the objective of taking care of the house and its walls with the same attention with which one can dedicate oneself to a person.

The inspirational muse of the exotic and fabulous "Arjumand's world" is precisely the Indian princess Arjumand, for whom the Taj Mahal was built. And it is precisely from India, specifically from Agra, that the decorative idea of Idarica Gazzoni's wallpapers starts. A wide world that touches many peoples of the world, from the decorations of ancient Persian and Ottoman clothing, to the brocades created for the Russian court, to the indigo blue of Japanese fabrics, to the squares, stripes, flowers and curls of popular Chinese clothing. And then the Arab world, the Balkans, Greece, and Turkey. A journey skillfully traced by free hand to create dreamlike visions imbued with color.

The inspiring muse of the exotic and fabulous "Arjumand's world" is precisely the Indian princess Arjumand, for whom the Taj Mahal was built. And it is precisely from India, specifically from Agra, that the decorative idea of Idarica Gazzoni's wallpapers starts. A wide world that touches many peoples of the world, from the decorations of ancient Persian and Ottoman clothing, to the brocades created for the Russian court, to the indigo blue of Japanese fabrics, to the squares, stripes, flowers and curls of popular Chinese clothing. And then the Arab world, the Balkans, Greece, and Turkey. A journey skilfully traced by free hand to create dreamlike visions imbued with color.

Gazzoni's story begins in Brussels, Belgium, with the school of imitation marbles and oil-painted woods where, among woods and grains, she learns to smell scents and visualize the passing of the centuries. She then goes on to paint textures and enchanted landscapes in many homes around the world. Her first success? Reproducing a Napoleonic military headquarters, complete with bivouac fires and tiny soldiers in uniform, in her home, juxtaposing the walls with a ceiling reminiscent of an exotic boudoir and a Scottish bedroom. This is her expressive code: a constant tension towards the creation of a visionary world that magically ends up adapting to any type of furniture.  

Two strict rules govern her hand: that of tonality, that is of colors always in chromatic harmony with each other; and the absence of digital: all her drawings are in fact born as actual paintings, nothing digital.

But the starting point of this story of all-Italian excellence of worldwide renown (Idarica Gazzoni is internationally known, especially in the USA) could also be another one, and move from an idea of a divergent design with respect to classic interior design: she does not design furniture and objects. She does not focus on the content but dresses the container transforming it into a comfortable and incomparable shell.

And if, thanks to her disciplined but exuberant creativity, the walls come to move with a life of their own, catapulting us each time into fantastic and distant worlds, well ... then don't call it wallpaper anymore.