Featured at the “Dimore Italiane” Live Auction – Cambi’s unmissable event dedicated to the best of Italian family residences scheduled for Tuesday, April 18, 2023 in Genoa – is the collection of the Cesari family, prominent home textile entrepreneurs and owners of the iconic Cesari in Rome, historically led by founder Luigi Cesari.
The collection takes the form of a vast ensemble of vintage objects, paintings and furniture collected over time by Luigi Cesari and continued with great care and attention by his wife Stefania.
This collection fully reflects the elegance and taste proposed by the Cesari brand since its founding. A company that has gained worldwide fame thanks to the refinement of their products, lining the most important living rooms of the most prominent families and becoming one of the symbols of the Roman Dolce Vita.
The Cesari family’s adventure began in 1947 with the birth of the eponymous brand founded by Luigi Cesari and the opening of the first store on Via Barberini, in the beating heart of Rome. Luigi Cesari, born in 1915 and an old-style man, immediately demonstrated a flair, savoir faire and great intuition that would soon lead him to become an undisputed pioneer in the sector in the early postwar period.
“I understood,” Luigi Cesari recounts in a past interview, “that the habit of favoring homes as places for the social life of Italians, at the expense of public gatherings, was about to take hold. And that therefore furnishings would have a considerable “boom.” So it did: the industry has been growing steadily ever since.”
Thus was born Cesari furnishing fabrics, which would see the expansion of several locations in Italy and around the world. An all-Italian story of success, elegance and unparalleled quality.
Among the clients of Cesari are politicians, actors, nobles and industrialists. The Agnelli family buys linens in Via Barberini, also thousands of banks and ministers. Cesari fabrics have been used for King Khaled’s royal palace in Saudi Arabia, for the “Belle Rive” residence of Sheikh Isa Bin Kalifa, for the villas of Sheikhs Alarty and Kamel, and for the Italian embassies in Beijing, Moscow, Bucharest, Accra, East Berlini, Tunis, Nairobi, and Aden. His clients include the Cita Hotels chain and many other luxurious hotels around the world: almost all the major hotels in Rome, the Quisisana in Capri, the Ritz in Paris, the Africa Meridienne in Tunis, the Palm Beach in Djerba, the Mal Beach in Hammamet, the Golf in Dhoa.
A triumphant escalation, including the awarding of several international prizes, such as the one received in Paris in 1962 “Gold Cup of French Good Taste” awarded by an international jury chaired by Jean Cocteau, and the “Silver Masks” award.
In 1965 a second atelier was opened, also in Rome, on Via del Babuino, in Valadier’s historic palazzo: the so-called “Palazzetto Cesari”. A decisive reference point for architects and interior designers from Rome and beyond.
In 1990 Luigi Cesari was awarded the title of Cavaliere del lavoro.
With him at his side for all time was his wife Stefania, a woman of great worth, great charm and great taste, a lover of beauty and a great collector of fans, so much so that she deserved an art monograph by Franco Maria Ricci, and antique handkerchiefs. To date probably one of the most comprehensive collections in the world.
