HotelChatter

This vase can be found in the kitchen of a two-bedroom suite in The Mark New York on Manhattan's fashionable Upper East Side. Located right off Madison Avenue in the 70s, one of the city's most affluent 'hoods, this hotel caters to a pretty classy crowd, so it's no surprise they enlisted the help of Fornasetti to liven up one of the more under-used rooms of the suite.

The Fornasetti website proclams:

"For Piero Fornasetti, a single idea provided enough inspiration to create infinite variations. In fact, much of his work involved constant evolutions of specific themes. But the most famous, the image that inspired Fornasetti to coin the title ‘Tema e Variazioni’, is the enigmatic face of a woman; the opera singer Lina Cavalieri.

Lina Cavalieri’s face, explained Piero Fornasetti, was another archetype – a quintessentially beautiful and classic image. It was this formal, graphic appeal (rather than Lina Cavalieri’s celebrity) that demanded such loyalty and inspired the spontaneous and ceaseless creativity of Fornasetti. For him, this face became the ultimate enduring motif."

So there you have it. Not quite "creepy," more "quintessentially beautiful and classic." Tomato, tom-ah-to.

[Photo: HotelChatter]