A collection of expressive interpretations of furniture.

I happened to read, exclusively out of academic duty, some late nineteenth century personal conduct handbooks.
I remember two American titles in particular but I do not transcribe them so that no one reading me now wastes their time certainly better used in another way.
In them, I found everything most harmful to the mind that can be condensed in the approximately three hundred pages of text I managed to study.

The authors stigmatize precise rules, even theorems, by no means limiting themselves to indications about furnishings but also giving precise instructions about the very character to be attributed to individual rooms.
I have a precise idea about this topic and, although professionally involved in the necessary and confessed knowledge of historical values, I have always associated the concept of “design success” with the attitude shared by the more fortunate among us of achieving beauty and functionality without following rules, i.e. through invention. By creating an unbridgeable gap between people who know how to do it and those who copy because they have no ideas of their own.

Stanze Segrete came into being as a game without rules.
It is a collection of expressive interpretations of furniture written by people who live in the imaginary or real walls of the rooms they describe.

I used a blank diary passed from hand to hand to collect thoughts and digressions about the private rooms of the people around me in a random, informal and unstructured way. Brief episodes of furniture – existing, thought about, designed or probable – close and dear to the people talking about them. There was no expressive limit!
Some contributors wrote only a few lines, others wrote much longer pieces.
Their words are joined by sketches, drawings, scribbles or photos that are not necessarily professional or in focus.
The message highlighted in these pages is also linked to the way they are read.
Leafing through them, we come across the emotion of a water-color, a friendly joke, meticulously described details, intimate interpretations, the story of a day, an idea about how to live better and many other things, all different from each other just as the different, multi-faceted and multi-colored worlds of everyone who made their contribution to Stanze Segrete.
I left several pages blank at the end: they will be useful to anyone keen to continue the collection.

Paolo Casti

Link Issuu: https://issuu.com/paolo_casti/docs/stanze_segrete