Gary Hume’s artworks become furniture and design objects for Giobagnara

Born into a Genovese family with a dedication to lifestyle retail that stretches back generations, Giorgio Bagnara grew up with a passion for art and design. Drawn to the use of leather in interior design beyond upholstery, in 1999, he decided to turn his ideas and intuition into a brand. So he started by picking up the Yellow Pages.

‘It was the way of doing research at the time,' he says, crediting the business phone directory as the main tool that helped him set up Giobagnara. Genova lacked a strong craft heritage, but Bagnara spent time learning from cobblers and motorbike saddle repairers. He credits his grandparents with teaching him how to craft using wood and metal. ‘From them, I learned techniques, precision and a respect for manual work: if you are hammering a nail, you have to do it right.'

Three decades on and Giobagnara is a leading design brand with a collection that spans everything from furniture and lighting to decorative objects and games, alongside collaborations with the likes of Orient Express and Cheval Blanc. For Bagnara, art has been a lifelong passion and a key part of the company. A collector with a penchant for material art, he names favourites such as Agostino Bonalumi, Piero Dorazio and Pablo Atchugarry, and works by Ignazio Gardella, Ico Parisi and Gio Ponti. ‘Within the company, we created a pensatoio [thinking room] dedicated to the art collection, a space for inspiration for all,' he says.

Introducing Giobagnara Art Editions

Branching into art editions seemed a logical progression, and when Bagnara and the brand's curator Nick Vinson were thinking about a project for Milan Design Week 2026, it felt natural to embed art at its heart. They began brainstorming around intarsio (a form of wood inlaying that is similar to marquetry), led by Giobagnara's expertise with leather marquetry, and Vinson's own interest in the stone marquetry technique known as pietra dura.

The final collection comprises leather designs by Martino Gamper, as well as a series of works by artist Gary Hume that combine aluminium, suede and nappa leather. The latter features 13 pieces, ranging from boxes and trays to vases, room dividers and a bar cabinet (arguably the collection's pièce de résistance). The objects are defined by solid aluminium carved with shapes that recreate Hume's artworks (many originally painted on aluminium), infilled with leather in hues picked from the brand's 400-strong catalogue. The result might seem closer to art than design, as each object has a precious expression that momentarily distracts from its inherent functionality.

Works include Hume's American Tan series, featuring stylised cheerleaders in action, alongside Night Watch, The Cleric and Archipelago, a 2020 body of work inspired by the silhouette of the lifejacket as an emblem of a migrant's journey. ‘I had great fun watching as Nick flipped through my archive of the soul, going “no, no, yes”,' says Hume. ‘It was weirdly relaxing. After a little mutual “What?!”, we began to find the images and forms we thought might work.'

Working with Hume has been a fulfilling experience for Bagnara: ‘I immediately noticed the way he looks at his artworks, the way he strokes them with a sense of elegance and love. You then understand how his subconscious is reflected in his work, how deeply he feels about it.'

The collection was built around ways to conceive an artwork as an object: a painting is rolled up to become a vase; groups of similar works are applied to the surfaces of trays and boxes, becoming small families of objects; antique painted room dividers become the reference for this typology, currently Hume's favourite. ‘The “Belarus” screen interests me,' he says. ‘The original painting [from 2000] is a combination of the Hanukkah, an angel's head from the Niemeyer cathedral in Brasília, and my feelings while watching Come and See, a heartrending Second World War film directed by Elem Klimov. Now it has become a beautiful thing, its function to divide or conceal.'

Asked to pick a piece that best reflects the collection, Bagnara singles out the cabinet. A precisely functional object of essential simplicity, it is, he says, ‘a product with an element of eternity, as all art should be'. He nods to his dream for Giobagnara – to be what 20th-century design is for him today. ‘I care about creating a product that has all the characteristics to be usable and alive 100 years from now.'

Each object from the Giobagnara Art Edition collection is signed and forms part of a limited and numbered edition of 12
giobagnara.com

This article appears in Wallpaper’s July 2026 Design Directory is available from 4 June, in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today