It isn’t often that Malta appears in international media for its rich history and architectural heritage, with a focus on its beauty and what remains, rather than its losses. Which makes the recent publication of a 38-page photographic portfolio on Malta within the silk-bound 20th edition of Cabana Magazine – a publication dedicated to interiors around the world – a most welcome and pleasant exposé.
Design Dispatch catches up with Michele Tufigno, researcher and Creative Director of Studio Tufigno – a creative consultancy practice based in Valletta focused on interior decoration, arts consultancy and curation – who got involved in this collaboration from the start.
“It all began as a text message from my friend Suzanne Sharp, asking if I could help her son Jamie with a little project he was working on. After a brief chat, it turned out this project was an extensive photographic portfolio featuring Malta in Cabana Magazine,” says Michele.
“I soon got down to selecting some of Malta’s most beautiful sites and interiors, securing access to them and coordinating all the shooting process with state and church entities and private owners until Jamie and Suzanne Sharp and Cabana Magazine Deputy Director and photographer Miguel Flores-Vianna flew in for an intense five-day shoot.”
The brief, he explains, was very simple: “to share Malta’s beauty, intimate interiors and grand architecture with the world, presenting it as a land of colours and contrasts, a crossroads of cultures, colonists and settlers.”
The travel portfolio, written by Suzanne Sharp, is featured alongside the refurbishment of England’s Castle Howard by decorator and antique advisor Remy Renzullo, the antique-filled Paris apartment of Sotheby’s chairman, Mario Tavella, as well as a travel portfolio on the Indian state of Gujarat, renowned for its handicraft trade.
Suzanne, designer and co-founder of The Rug Company, revisits her childhood on the island while exploring its rich and complex history, its identity, and its resilience through architectural masterpieces and rarely-seen interiors, concentrating on Saint John’s Co-Cathedral, the Archbishop’s and Grandmasters’ Palaces in Valletta, and Palazzo Dorell in Gudja, a private residence belonging to the Trapani Galea Feriol family.
“As a modernist treat, we also photographed the charming ‘Mon Nid’ in Wied iz-Zurrieq, a beautiful summer house clad in red stucco and blue terrazzo,” says Michele.
Sharing how this tiny island caught the attention of the Cabana team, Michele says the brand’s mission “has always been to share beauty in lesser-known locations, opening bolted doors to let its devoted readers into unseen properties and hidden interiors. Whilst Malta may be relatively well known for its climate, it became immediately apparent that very few know of its immense architectural heritage, its staggering and threatened beauty.”
“After the fantastic response to ‘The Queen’s House’ in Issue 19, which featured Villa Guardamangia and an accompanying article written by Lord Mountbatten’s grandson Ashley Hicks, the publication decided to devote an entire 38 pages to our country.”
On of the brand’s strengths is its ability to discover and exalt beauty in ordinary and extraordinary places. At this delicate time for Malta’s architectural heritage, Michele believes it is “fundamental to see our country through the eyes of the ‘other’, to see its objective strengths and its tragic shortcomings.”
“It is only through knowledge and passion that we will be able to save Malta from itself and preserve its last-remaining charm and beauty. All we need to do is look at it through new eyes, see the wonders of its history in the smallest things and remember that it’s part of us and us part of it,” says Michele.
“Change can come from the smallest of acts: as I always say, we can make Malta beautiful again, one kitchen at a time.”
Photography: Miguel Flores-Vianna / Cabana Magazine
