Particular the Butterfly room Museo Casa Mollino. Turin

“Butterfly” by Beatrice Brandini

I have already dedicated a post to Carlo Mollino (February 2015), whose work and his personal aesthetic vision have had a great influence in the world of art and culture in general. After having read a lot about him, I wanted to visit his house that the passionate and tenacious Fulvio Ferrari (together with his son Napoleone) has redone living transforming it into a museum.

    

Living room with wall path designed by Mollino

Living room with wall path designed by Mollino

Entrance

There is no website of this magical place, but its fame and fascination is known all over the world, where admirers, designers, architects, artists, directors … often travel, arriving from the other side of the globe, to visit it (Museo Casa Mollino, via Napione 2, Turin, visits by appointment telephone +39 011 8129868).

This is not just the charm of seeing a beautiful museum, where there are other pieces and furnishings that belonged and, for the most part, entirely designed by the same genius of the twentieth century, visiting this place you come home different, enriched , understanding that what we have seen and heard is something extraordinary, in a certain sense we could define the visit as “an intense experience”.

Living room door towards the terrace. Tridacna Gigante Shell

View from the terrace on the river

    

Glimpse entrance

Polaroid by Carlo Mollino

    

Lunchroom

Fulvio Ferrari, chemist, whose inexhaustible and eclectic personality has seen him successfully compete in catering, design, art (gallery owner), today is the president of Casa Mollino, whose passion and knowledge has become almost an obsession for this eccentric and unprejudiced architect.

Carlo Mollino (1905 – 1973) was a designer, a fan of aerodynamics, an airplane pilot, a photographer, a great architect of the twentieth century, a figure who still today (and tomorrow) inspires creative minds.

    

Plaster cast, empire bed and other details in the Butterfly room

The Butterfly Room

The Butterfly Room

Prints in the Butterfly Room

    

Dressing gown and other details in the bedroom or Butterfly Room

The Butterfly Room

    

Bathroom

The house in via Napione is the last secret dwelling conceived by the eclectic Mollino as a house of the spirit, destined to host its incorporeal essence beyond the interlude of earthly life. It was redesigned by Mollino between 1960 and 1968, so the architect dedicated a lot of time to the realization of the perfect place. The apartment was (still today) on the main floor of a 1888 villa in the city center of Turin. However, the house was devoid of inhabitants and guests, few people close to Mollino who knew its existence.

    

Other views of the Casa Museo di Carlo Mollino

Other views of the Casa Museo di Carlo Mollino

    

Entrance

    

Entrance

We understand how this story and this house are pervaded by charm, but above all by mystery, a mystery that could have a key to reading “The Message from the Dark Room”, a book of history, criticism and photographic images that Carlo Mollino wrote in 1949, in which we find the Egyptian queen Taja, wife of the pharaoh Amenophis III (famous for his passion for architecture), in the frontispiece of the book; but since this text has no connection with ancient Egypt, why did Mollino use this quotation?

Speaking with Fulvio Ferrari, it is clear that Mollino drew on Egyptian civilization to build this house, faithful to the concept (just like the Egyptians) for whom the afterlife is more important than the earthly one; the Egyptian buildings and houses (temples and pyramids) were designed to house the soul of the deceased, Carlo Mollino built the house in Via Napione as a “Residence d’Éternite”, becoming himself the Pharaoh Mollino.

Other views of the Casa Museo di Carlo Mollino

    

Photo by Carlo Mollino in the house in Via Napione

    

Entrance

Photographic woods, zebras, shells, leopard walls, mirrored and reflecting surfaces, an army of butterflies, female portraits … are all symbolic and esoteric elements rich in meaning. In the beautiful book “La Casa di Mollino”, Fulvio Ferrari explains in detail this fascinating story, concluding with these words: “The ancient Egyptians, who even disappeared for two thousand years, still live among us, would have been the subject of a book that the charmer wanted to write. But who could suppose that instead of writing it on the printing paper he would have elaborated it from a magician with a “game of cards” made with tiles, carpets, mirrors, second-hand objects? It is suspected to be words for an initiatory temple, perhaps the last message that Carlo Mollino spelled out: a place to induce those who today enter Via Napione to reach a state of higher consciousness, a reflection of the divine nature in the human.”

And it is exactly this feeling that you feel crossing the door.

Portrait of Carlo Mollino

      

Mood “end of sixties” by Beatrice Brandini

Good life to everyone!

Beatrice