Villa Lunardi, the Pratesi family’s
17th-century stone manor, has been
thoughtfully restored over 35 years.
Produced by Robert Rufino.
A R C H I T E C T U R A L D I G E ST
2 011
Mixing brilliant paints and
bold fabrics, stylish linens
matriarch Dede Pratesi
displays her signature flair
at her family’s historic villa
in Tuscany. By James
Reginato. Photography by
Pieter Estersohn.
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The villa’s main approach cuts through an ancient
olive grove. opposite: Dede Pratesi, center, in the
home’s limonaia, with her son, Federico, his wife,
Gaia, and their children, Margherita and Athos.
ven a marriage of true minds can harbor differing opinions. Thirty-five years ago Dede
Pratesi’s husband, Athos, brought her to Tuscany from Milan, where they were raising their
four children, to see Villa Lunardi, a seventeenthcentury stone manor steeped in regional details.
Athos, the late head of the century-old luxury linens firm that bears his family name, had spotted
the ten-bedroom house while hiking in the hills
north of Florence. Characteristically, Athos saw
an opportunity; Dede saw missing roof tiles and
hip-high weeds in the courtyard. Inside, the ornately patterned marble floors were blackened
from neglect, and the delicate frescoes on the coffered ceilings were crumbling.
Athos ultimately won Dede over, and then,
slowly, so did the house. “Now I love it, tanto,” says Dede, who
has made the villa and its nearly 100 acres her primary residence
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since the leadership of the company passed into the deft hands of
her son, Federico, following Athos’s death in 1995.
At first the family used the estate as a getaway, and Dede spent
her weekends overseeing the restoration of the frescoes and the
marble tile, as well as the humbler, softer, and more easily damaged cotto-tile floors in the less formal rooms. While no major
rebuilding was necessary, the time-consuming labor of bringing
the house’s long history to life was highly demanding. “Believe
me, it was a worse nightmare than any construction work,” Federico attests.
One of Dede’s favorite spots today is the stone grotto called a
limonaia, a feature common to Northern Italian homes, where
potted lemon trees are sheltered from the cold. On warm evenings, it’s now a magical place for predinner cocktails, served by
housemen in white jackets, and for Dede’s stories of how the Pratesi brand became, as is often said, “the Chanel of bed linens.”
Founded in 1906 by Athos’s grandfather (who, company legend
has it, embroidered his first set of linens to woo his bride-to-be),
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Pratesi was soon providing sheets and pillowcases to Florentine
nobles. Under Athos’s stewardship, the firm catered to the modern royalty of Hollywood, several of whom became the family’s
personal friends.
“Que carina,” says Dede, beaming at the mention of Elizabeth
Taylor, who once checked out of a hotel because the beds were
not outfitted with Pratesi linens. Dede tells of arranging for the
actress’s hospital bed to be made up with a set of lace-accented
sheets. Taylor, in turn, made a customer of her friend Michael
Jackson, after ordering him a sleeping bag made of Pratesi black
silk jacquard.
Both Athos and Dede traveled frequently, and the exotic shapes
of the Ming dynasty and Indian Raj treasures they brought home
complement the villa’s mostly French Provincial and Italian furniture. Against this background Dede has mixed in a few modern
accents, such as an iconic Warren Platner wire table by Knoll. To
counter the hard surfaces of the floors, Dede frames every window with formal curtains and favors richly upholstered sofas and
chairs. In her textile choices, she isn’t daunted by the bold tile underfoot, pairing the floors’ intricate variations on brown, black,
and white with fabrics in mod orange and yellow, or with traditional but exuberant patterns by Manuel Canovas and Colefax
and Fowler.
Mad about color, Dede continually invents new shades for her
walls. Her custom combinations of red and orange or cherry and
coral reinterpret Tuscany’s saturated ochers, reds, and umbers.
She daringly juxtaposes them with pale blues, acid greens, and
turquoise. “You always keep refreshing,” says the Pratesi matriarch, summing up her decorating philosophy. “A house like this,
you restore every day. It’s always a work in progress.”
Her next undertaking may be a swimming pool, which she
has long forbidden. Protective of the home she once reluctantly
accepted—“real Tuscan houses don’t have pools!” she cries—her
resolve has nonetheless melted in the face of entreaties from her
seven grandchildren. A difference of opinion, after all, can be the
start of something grand.
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A view into the library,
whose rich red walls are
paired with a Persian
carpet from Dede’s
childhood home and
tables the Pratesis
brought back from
the Philippines.
opposite: A grotto
fountain in the garden.
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clockwise from top left: The kitchen
table, covered in vintage Pratesi, is surrounded
by 19th-century chairs inherited from Dede’s
grandparents. All the paint colors in the house
are custom-mixed. Beneath a painted-wood
ceiling is a bed dressed with embroidered shams
and Pratesi bedding. A charming stairway from
the drawing room. Living room ceiling frescoes
predate the early-1700s Venetian chandelier.
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