T Magazine: By Design | The Narrative of Home

As with her novels, the decoration of the Milan apartment belonging to Italian writer Benedetta Cibrario reveals an obsession with moments gone by and objects that mark the passage of time.

Years ago, I visited Jane Austen's home in Chawton, England, and left feeling I had tapped into the source of her prose. The well-worn floors and the walls, papered in delicate Regency designs, represented a kind of narrative architecture. The small table on which she wrote each day, having completed her domestic chores, spoke of her patience. The meticulous embroidery on a fine cotton scarf made me think of her hands and eyes — the intensity of her focus. Since that visit, I have come to realize that writers' spaces reflect our work, and vice versa.

When I begin a novel, I rarely have a clear idea of where it will take me, but my fascination with the passing of time and objects that convey a sense of history inevitably makes its way onto the page. Two of my three books are period pieces — "Rossovermiglio," set in the early 20th century, and "Lo Scurnuso," in the 18th.

Here, in the bustling center of Milan, I found what I was looking for: a place lost to time. The Palazzo Lurani Cernuschi dates from the 16th century and has been owned by the same family ever since. When I moved in three years ago, the apartment had been inhabited by the same tenants for over 50 years, and had the sense of having been left behind in the rushed evolution of this city. Not knowing how to design spaces, I enlisted Paolo Cattaneo, an architect with a deep knowledge of art history who has done beautiful homes in Turin and Tuscany, to help me instill the classical but comfortable character I desired.

Starting in my office, Cattaneo and I tentatively placed a few objects here and there, including a red velvet chair by Giuseppe Gibelli for Sormani from the 1960s. Soon, throughout the apartment, the objects seemed to dictate where they wanted to be placed, just as my characters do when I write. Sofas that Cattaneo designed and upholstered in Rubelli velvet gathered in an intimate sitting area, while over by the window went two Napoleon III chairs from Liguria. I bought the desk, which was originally a 1930s vanity, at an antiques shop in North London. The small tables and stools are all from the 1930s and '40s — "poor" objects with no aspirations, but they all have a rigorous and elegant design.

I knew that I wanted blues and greens throughout, and fabrics designed by Allegra Hicks, whose aesthetic dialogues as well with antiques as it does with contemporary furniture. She created the rug and tablecloth in the dining room, textiles for the other sofa and chairs in the living room and the dhurrie in my office. There are plenty of windows here, so I hung vintage cotton voile curtains made in St. Gallen, Switzerland, over 120 years ago. I love how the light filters through the botanic motifs. I can envision the anonymous hand embroidering them with painstaking concentration. In what other windows have they screened the sun?

I do know of one other place the curtains have hung: in the bedroom of the protagonist in "Rossovermiglio." The nameless narrator comes from a wealthy family, the kind who would own homes brimming with beautiful things. As the story unfolds, she emancipates herself from her material legacies, giving away the very paintings, clothes and jewelry that had defined her. The catalyst for the plot was a work of art: a portrait by John Singer Sargent of a woman in an evening gown, hers the distant gaze of someone who no longer knows where she belongs. Even there, it is the plush velvet pleats of her dress, the sparkle in her diamond earrings, that inform who she is, and where she is from.

Much of the furniture in the apartment comes from the family villa of my husband, Emanuele Tournon, a descendant of French officials who came to Italy with Napoleon. When I found an Empire mantelpiece in Orvieto, I felt I had come full circle: "Lo Scurnuso" is the tale of the brief life of an 18th-century Neapolitan sculptor who made his living creating figures for nativity scenes. The mantelpiece once belonged to Enrico Medioli, the screenwriter for many Luchino Visconti films, including "The Leopard," based on the 1958 novel of the same name by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (with whom I share a publisher, Feltrinelli Editore). Everything came together in that one object — the act of writing, the Napoleonic era, family bonds. The mantelpiece arrived in Milan in many pieces, in the trunk of my car. It took months to bring back the shine of its ormolu bronze decorations, but when it was finally in place in the living room, I felt a rush of emotion. Now it looks as though it has always been there, a part of my life.

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