Villa Lunardi, the Pratesi family s · One of Dede s favorite spots today is the stone grotto...

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90 C O N D É N AST L I V I N G

Villa Lunardi, the Pratesi family’s 17th-century stone manor, has been thoughtfully restored over 35 years.

Produced by Robert Rufino.

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.

ARC H ITECTU R AL D IGE ST 2011

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C O N D É N AST L I V I N G 91


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ven a marriage of true minds can harbor dif-fering opinions. Thirty-five years ago Dede Pratesi’s husband, Athos, brought her to Tus-cany from Milan, where they were raising their four children, to see Villa Lunardi, a seventeenth- century stone manor steeped in regional details. Athos, the late head of the century-old luxury lin-ens firm that bears his family name, had spotted the ten-bedroom house while hiking in the hillsnorth of Florence. Characteristically, Athos saw an opportunity; Dede saw missing roof tiles and hip-high weeds in the courtyard. Inside, the or-nately patterned marble floors were blackened from neglect, and the delicate frescoes on the cof-fered ceilings were crumbling.

Athos ultimately won Dede over, and then, slowly, so did the house. “Now I love it, tanto,” says Dede, whohas made the villa and its nearly 100 acres her primary residence

since the leadership of the company passed into the deft hands ofher 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 dam-aged 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,” Fed-erico 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 eve-nings, it’s now a magical place for predinner cocktails, served by housemen in white jackets, and for Dede’s stories of how the Pra-tesi brand became, as is often said, “the Chanel of bed linens.”

Founded in 1906 by Athos’s grandfather (who, company legendhas it, embroidered his first set of linens to woo his bride-to-be),

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.


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Pratesi was soon providing sheets and pillowcases to Florentinenobles. Under Athos’s stewardship, the firm catered to the mod-ern 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 MichaelJackson, 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 fur-niture. 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 win-dow with formal curtains and favors richly upholstered sofas and

chairs. In her textile choices, she isn’t daunted by the bold tile un-derfoot, pairing the floors’ intricate variations on brown, black, and white with fabrics in mod orange and yellow, or with tradi-tional 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, andturquoise. “You always keep refreshing,” says the Pratesi matri-arch, 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 thestart 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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Villa Lunardi, the Pratesi family s · One of Dede s favorite spots today is the stone grotto...

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