This is apparently Enzo Mari’s fireplace, where it looks like he burned a postcard of Julia Louis Dreyfus in effigy every month? I have no idea, but the only other domestic images I can find from his studio are from this apartamento magazine interview from 2009, when I was deep in Enzo Mariology. [Everything else for this image is unattributed fluff. And do you know how hard it is to search for Enzo Mari’s own house? This is ridiculous.]
I will update this post with more info when I find it, and if it turns out to be all locked away for two generations in Mari’s archive, I’ll post an update about that, too.
[next morning update]
Thanks to Milanese photographer/greg.org hero Claudio Santambrogio, we have info on the fireplace via an elegaic 2015 profile of Mari, then 83, at home in Corriere della Serra Living, which was republished in 2020 after Covid took both Mari and his wife Lea Virgine in quick, sad, succession:
nell’angolo il camino, uno ziggurat domestico con le foto di nipoti sorridenti. «Questo è uno degli interventi fatti nella casa, come la cucina-corridoio. Non ci sono disegni, l’ho pensato e fabbricato insieme al muratore. Per ogni piano due strati di mattoni, poi intonacati. Per me è stato un gioco, un passatempo, la realizzazione di un sogno dopo aver spiato le case dei contadini. Sarebbe bello potersi occupare solo di mantenere vivo il fuoco»
“in the corner the fireplace, a domestic ziggurat with photos of smiling grandchildren. This is one of the interventions made in the house, such as the kitchen-corridor. There are no drawings, I thought it and manufactured it together with the mason. For each level two layers of bricks, then plastered. For me it was a game, a pastime, the realization of a dream after spying on the homes of peasants. It would be nice to be able to take care of keeping the fire alive.”