New year, new beginnings and new designs

A new vision, website, collaborations, publications, educational partnerships and numerous new projects… As we reflect on our activities and achievements of the past year, we feel proud and optimistic that our 122-year-old company is in sync with current market trends, and that our new vision and collaborations will pave the way to continued success in the future.

The past twelve months were filled with great creativity and satisfaction for the team, while our global collaborations hit important milestones.

During the annual Milan Design Week, we celebrated contemporary Italian craftsmanship with an event that attracted much international attention while reinforcing our commitment to design diversity.

We joined forces with multi-award-winning US designer Peter Hawrylewicz of PH Studio in Miami and NY-based designer and illustrator Justin Teodoro – showing Hawrylewicz's sculptural furniture and Teodoro’s '#GraphicDoodle' collection, where youthful, fresh and original graffiti meets Picasso-inspired artwork. The latter’s limited-edition swimming pool collection, presented pre-summer, also provided tantalising inspiration for a new era and approach to pool art, showing how traditional mosaics can be applied unusually and playfully.

Visitors to the installation in the heart of Brera also enjoyed a live demonstration of intricate mosaic-making by our master mosaicists.

To coincide with Milan Design Week, we launched our new Fantini Mosaici website, where Teodoro's unique and rare art and Hawrylewicz’s marble furniture are now available.

To coincide with the 51^st UAE National Day anniversary we also redesigned our Abu Dhabi Mosque micro site, which is a case study that highlights Fantini Mosaici’s extensive scope of work in that majestic landmark building.

Celebrating our 122 years as a pioneer in the mosaic and stone sector, we also launched a new 270-page coffee table book, highlighting a carefully curated selection of our projects worldwide.

While the family that has owned Fantini Mosaici for four generations has always promoted the art of mosaic-making, we also have our own internal ongoing apprenticeship programme running, to pass on these centuries-old techniques to the new generation nation.

We are proud to announce an agreement with the prestigious Brera Accademia di Belle Arti, which will run a Fantini Mosaici scholarship programme for the 2022-23 academic year. We are excited and curious to see the results of this initiative with one of Italy's premier education facilities, which seeks to create awareness of the role that mosaic has played and still plays in Italy's art history, while offering opportunities for students to pursue a career in the mosaic industry.

At the beginning of 2022, we collaborated with the Bocconi School of Management as part of their EMiLUX Master's Programme, looking at the globalisation of luxury brands.

This included a site visit to the Palazzo Versace in Dubai, where students visited the luxurious property and experienced first-hand our mosaic work and how the fashion world and interior world collaborate to reinforce the successful Made in Italy business and entrepreneurial model.

Under the creative direction of Donatella Versace, we completed the installation of mosaics and pebble work in the Palazzo Versace Grand Lisboa Palace, Macau. This, the third Palazzo Versace property, also features detailed mosaic and patterned terrazzo and marble work by Fantini Mosaici, demonstrating our craftsmanship, look and finish. Developed by SJM Holdings, the unique Palazzo Versace occupies one of the 20-storey Grand Lisboa Palace complex towers and features a magnificent and vibrant swimming pool.

We have also been making our mark in the luxury boutique sector, opening the new Dior concept store in China and new Louis Vuitton boutiques in Madrid, Spain and Atlanta, USA.

In our home city of Milan, we are proud to have created the terrazzo floors in the new Luxottica headquarters and to have been a part of the internal team for the new Kiton headquarters.

Over the centuries, we have undertaken many projects in the iconic Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II arcade. Once again, our team of mosaicists were back in the prestigious and historic building, this time to create a staircase and flooring for the new Armani boutique, located in a space where our forebears previously installed mosaics decades ago.

One of the highlights of the past few months has been the completion of the flagship Cartier boutique in Rue de la Paix in Paris. Fantini Mosaici was hand-selected as one of the best global artisans to enhance the stunning new luxurious interior, which has a distinctive Parisian flavour.

Our relationship continues with the quintessential French jewellery maison – for whom we also created mosaics in their new Abu Dhabi boutique – with new stores in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and India set to open in 2023, each featuring our hand-cut and -installed mosaics.

Our global clientele continue to desire personalised artisanal mosaic pools, bathrooms and kitchen surfaces in the pursuit of rare and unique features in their luxury mansions and villas. Notable completed projects this year include complete villa renovations in Italy and the United States, where our hand-crafted surfaces – whether in mosaic, pebble stone or terrazzo – are increasingly sought after.

We are delighted to announce that our boutique in Foro Buonaparte opened in the last quarter of 2023. Designed by award-winning Italian architect and product designer Giuseppe Bavuso, the new space will create a hub in the historic centre of Milan, making it easily accessible and convenient for architects, designers and international visitors.

We are also looking forward to revealing details of a new rehabilitation project involving mosaic-making skill development, featuring never-seen-before mosaic designs from Fabián H. Ríos Rubino, who sadly passed away recently.

As the year ends, we would like to thank every one of you who has been part of this exciting journey, and we look forward to sharing and realising your design dreams and aspirations with you in 2023.

On behalf of the entire Fantini Mosaici family, we wish you and your families a happy, creative and prosperous New Year!

Buon anno 2023!