Piero Gesualdi creates unique Italian-style setting

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This was published 5 years ago

Piero Gesualdi creates unique Italian-style setting

By Stephen Crafti

Piero Gesualdi is a name synonymous with design in Melbourne.

Founder of Masons, a chain of fashion boutiques in Melbourne and Sydney through the 1970s and ‘80s, Gesualdi went on to establish Rosati’s in Flinders Lane with restaurateur Ronnie Di Stasio, which was a large cafe/bistro that took its design cue from an Italian railway station.

Given his background in both fashion and food, it’s not surprising that Tony Nicolini, owner of Italian Artisans in Victoria Avenue, Albert Park, approached Gesualdi to rework what was previously a pizza store.

“Tony is a pioneer in bringing Italian-style pizzas to Melbourne (operating Pizza Espresso and DOC for many years),” says Gesualdi, who was given the brief to create a truly Italian experience, a stone’s throw from Beaconsfield Parade.

Italian Artisans in Victoria Avenue, Albert Park.

Italian Artisans in Victoria Avenue, Albert Park.

“I wanted everything that you taste as well as touch to have been imbued with that Italian sensibility,” says Nicolini.

There’s also history in this 200-square-metre Victorian building. The late Don Levy Fitzpatrick’s Vic Pasta and Wine once occupied it in the 1980s, and it was where the young Nicolini, then only 17 years old, worked.

“There’s big shoes to fill here (Fitzpatrick went on to establish The George in Fitzroy Street),” says Nicolini.

What gives something that Italian feel?

“It’s simple.

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It’s about taking away all the unnecessary things and knowing what to leave out, as much as what to include,” says Gesualdi, who used a limited palette of materials in this fit-out.

Polished concrete floors feature throughout, as do some of the buildings original features: exposed steel lintels and a pressed metal ceiling.

Stucco lustro (polished plaster) features on the unadorned walls, with Thonet chairs loosely arranged.

“I wanted everything that you taste as well as touch to have been imbued with that Italian sensibility,” says Tony Nicolini.

“I wanted everything that you taste as well as touch to have been imbued with that Italian sensibility,” says Tony Nicolini.

Pivotal to the design is the use of steel, taking the form of customised shelving behind the bar to accommodate bottles of wine.

“There was a bar here before, but it cut off the space and was trying to do too much,” says Gesualdi, who has included taps to pour beer within this new steel shelf.

There’s also a nifty ‘secret’ steel door that conceals a couple of beer kegs.

Ventilated at the back, these shelves have been detailed to the nth degree.

With the decades Nicolini has spent in a kitchen, as well as Gesualdi’s experience during his hospitality years, both know instinctively how a kitchen should not only appear aesthetically, but also functionally.

Steel features extensively in the canteen-style kitchen window within Italian Artisans, with marble benches, including the server used strategically as a backdrop for the food.

“Restraint is a difficult word in the design arena, as well as in the food business.

I would prefer to use one or two special ingredients in a dish rather than simply use everything at my fingertips,” says Nicolini, who as Gesualdi and the great architect Mies Van der Rohe would say, ‘less is considerably more!’

‘You could say I had to read Tony’s mind with this project, but we really are on the same ‘page’,” says Gesualdi, picking up a new handmade antipasto timber tray customised for the tables.

“Look, each one fits perfectly in the centre of each table.

No-one has to reach over,” says Gesualdi, who is as admiring of the edge of the bar, made from timber and beautifully crafted by Italian furniture maker Orio Brandi.

“Just run your hand along that edge,” he adds.

The branding, menus and the graphics at Italian Artisans are also from an Italian, Emilio Roccioletti.

Inspired by the graphics coming out of Italy in the 1950s and ‘60s, Roccioletti’s palette ranges from 1950s soft pinks to aubergine, popular in the 1960s.

Rather than overstuff the interior, there are a few key pieces, including a steel cabinet that display some of the fine handpicked ingredients served to diners, including olive oils and cheeses.

“It’s about celebrating the forgotten Italian artisan,” says Nicolini, something that has enriched not only Italian Artisans but, as importantly, Melbourne as a whole.

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