Call Your Nonna-Pasta-Inspired Decor is Here

Artistic Tile released a pasta-themed mosaic line called Al Dente, featuring macaroni and farfalle shapes, after an April Fools’ Instagram joke generated strong interest. The concept came from a rendering review for another boomerang-like design, with macaroni considered as a better fit. The company offered the pasta prints through its Tailored To customization program and expanded the collection with additional pasta-inspired options made from specific stone materials. Designers and artists describe pasta as “pure geometry,” using shapes, ridges, and forms to influence furniture silhouettes and accessories. Hardware brands have also launched collections with pasta-inspired knobs and pulls, reflecting broad familiarity and personal associations with pasta.

"When Artistic Tile, a luxury stone and tile company, promoted its newest product line-mosaics featuring macaroni and farfalle-in April of this year on Instagram, there was an immediate appetite for the design. Called Al Dente, the tiles took inspiration from pasta shapes in sauce. "Every Italian restaurant should take this seriously," one person commented. The followers, however, had to simmer down: the post on the first of the month was an April Fools' joke."

"The idea came to Zach Epstein, Artistic Tile 's president and chief product officer, when he was reviewing a rendering for another design that had a boomerang shape. Macaroni would be better, he thought. But excitement over the joke reinforced the idea and Artistic Tile decided to actually offer the pasta prints through the company's Tailored To program, which offers customized designs. They even added two more options: vodka rigatoni made from limestone inlaid in a blush Rosa Perlino and multifaceted Limone Marmi marble butter noodles. "At the end of the day it's a very useful, abstract pattern," Epstein adds."

"This gag turned reality is just one of the latest examples of interior design's most delicious new trend: Pasta is making its way into the world of home decor. Designers are treating the pantry staple as an architectural muse that is "pure geometry," points out Canadian Italian artist and industrial designer Chris Fusaro, who first played around with cylindrical mezzi paccheri to piece together a strainer. Other designers zero in on the shapes, ridges and all, as inspiration for furniture silhouettes and accessories."

""Pasta is the most democratic form of artistry. Everyone has a memory of it, everyone has an opinion on it," says Teegan Cocchiaro, codirector of Lo & Co Interiors, an Australian hardware brand that recently released a collection, also called Al Dente, that includes surrealistic orecchiette knobs and ruffly lasagne pulls."

Read at Architectural Digest