Tat Meets Viola Lanari
Photography by Jasper Fry
24th March 2023
I knew I liked Viola when she asked me how my interview with Gabby (Deeming, former Creative Director of House & Garden) had gone. I said it went well, although when Gabby had asked how organised I was, I said: 'I have learnt to be', which was perhaps a half-truth. Apparently, when Viola was interviewing for a job with Gabby on the decoration team, she had said exactly the same. So I thought, Gabby now knows not to trust anyone who gives that answer. That was around seven years ago (gulp), and since then, I have seen Viola's career flourish.
I always knew she was a talent. I would look longingly at her old styling shoots, trying to imbibe the same artistic abstract thought behind them. Sadly it never took. It was cemented in my mind when she turned up at the House & Garden pop-up in 2016, curated by Gabby. She had strapped ten plaster lamps into the back of an Addison Lee. They were magnificent, odd and heart-warming. Viola manages to impart some of her own mystique and life-force into her lamps, for as she sees it: “Plaster has this life in it, almost as if by adding water, the mineral was taking one long breath between being a powder to rock solid. And this one breath is all you have to direct its transforming body”. They all went within the week. If you were one of the lucky ones to have bought one of these, you can pat yourself on the back as I believe you have purchased a collector's piece. Viola might cringe at this kind of assertion, similar to how I do when I read my first articles (I don't think they're hilarious), but they were indeed something. She had made these exceptional pieces with little to no training. In an article with Inigo, she posited though that: “I don't think it's quite true to say I taught myself how to use plaster. Plaster taught me how to use plaster, as did the mistakes I made – and continue to make”. This is a glorious way to think about this process. I know many who bask in the perception of having been self-taught, but not Viola. She wants to continue to create and push her talent.
This was confirmed when I went to the Milan Furniture Fair last year. Viola had taken a space and named it ‘The Passion Store’. She had covered the windows in an iridescent material that glazed the showroom in a hazy pink. Some real-life rose-tinted glasses but instead of perception, this was reality. “It taught me a lot about my work as a whole and in relation to design. We could state that 'Design' di per sé is imagination applied to functionality, leading to innovation. So I think my work is a lot of imagination, travelling to another world of design. The set of the Passion Store feels to me as if it was suspended in this pink - and very hot - cloud, standing almost otherworldly from the frantic fomo-charged Salone context”.
It was one hell of a one-woman show—a room filled with pieces that announced this woman's creativity. Anyone who has put an ounce of themselves on show will understand this, let alone anyone who has done this in Milan. But it paid off. Over the last few years, works have been sold worldwide. She has had a hugely successful collaboration with Porta Romana, and her pieces have adorned the pages of many a magazine. Now she has a feature in Tat. Her job is done.
To Follow Viola Click Here & To See Her Website Click Here
