In 1938, nonconformist Italian writer Curzio Malaparte (born Kurt Erich Suckert) purchased a large tract of land on Capo Massullo, a rocky peninsula along the coast of Capri. Measuring a scant one hundred feet long and thirty feet wide and situated above limestone cliffs that drop a dramatic 650 feet into the Mediterranean waters below, it was far from the pinnacle of welcoming terrains. One could only reach the locale by foot or by boat, effectively averting all but the most motivated of visitors to the rugged promontory. To Malaparte—who had recently been released from nearly three-year period of internal exile—the peninsula’s inaccessibility, combined with its untamed natural beauty, was the realization of a fantasy: a quiet place where he could write without distraction and find solitude rather than seclusion.

Casa Malaparte—the eponymous residence that Malaparte designed and built on this property—is a triumph of design, both inside and out. An unparalleled marriage of landscape and architecture, it extends along the entire length of Capo Massullo, a starkly sculptural presence that at once hearkens back to classical traditions while looking toward the modernist preferences typical of Malaparte’s avant-garde milieu. Moreover, Casa Malaparte is, perhaps, the most potent manifestation of a man’s self as a structure to ever exist, a true casa come me, or “house like me,” as Malaparte would come to describe his cliffside retreat—an autobiography in limestone and stucco.

In 2019, Tommaso Rositani Suckert—Malaparte’s youngest descendant—founded Malaparte Design, a company dedicated to preserving and continuing the legacies of his ancestor’s iconic home through the re-creation of Casa Malaparte’s bespoke furniture. Like every other aspect of the villa, from its signature exterior staircase leading to the sun-drenched roof to the Pompeiian-red paint on its stucco walls, Malaparte determined every detail of his home’s furnishings.

Malaparte Design focuses on pieces from in and around the villa’s living room, which boasts distinctive stone flooring laid in the ancient Roman mode of opus incertum, or “irregular work”; four large, walnut-framed picture windows positioned so as to capture the most arresting views rather than according to symmetrical balance; and a custom-made console table, bench, desk, and sofa, among other furnishings, specifically designed and placed for maximum impact and meaning—all made famous as the backdrop for Jean-Luc Godard’s 1963 film Le Mépris (Contempt). Malaparte Design’s reconstructions of the furniture, like their original counterparts, harness their conceiver’s maverick spirit and respect for ancient traditions and personal ritual, as well as the intrinsic qualities of his chosen materials. Rositani Suckert and his team have sourced the highest-quality materials and sought the talents of the best local artisans to craft and carve the furniture’s elements with the same respect for the materials’ natural properties while also making sure to carefully replicate the original designs.

Malaparte designed the console table for the hallway just off the villa’s living room, at the top of the staircase to its second floor. It is made of European walnut and tuff stone, a type of rock made from the compaction and cementation of volcanic ash. The piece is at once commensurate with Casa Malaparte’s furnishings—many of which are constructed of similar materials—and wholly set apart from them due to its remarkable carved legs, whose intricated scroll-like shape recalls the volute capitals atop columns from classical architecture.

Malaparte’s bench offers, perhaps, the most personal and introspective experience of all his custom furniture. In the villa, it is situated in front of a glass-backed fireplace; its fluted Carrara marble legs and walnut seat form a post-and-lintel structure—which is repeated in the fireplace it faces—that strongly calls to mind the ancient temples that still pepper the Mediterranean landscape. With or without a fire in the fireplace, the bench invites moments of self-reflection and meditation; either the dancing flames or the pristine view provides ample fodder for imaginative tranquility.

Outside Casa Malaparte, the bench continues to offer such moments of repose without the distraction of superfluous details, its clean lines recalling not only antiquity’s timeless structures but also the streamlined simplicity of modernist aesthetics—the beauty of such simplicity that only superior materials allow. Carrara marble, a distinctly white or blue-gray stone, has been continuously mined in the hills outside Carrara, Italy, since Ancient Roman times. It was used to build the Parthenon and Trajan’s Column, among other notable monuments and buildings, and it was Michaelangelo’s material of choice for his famed sculptures. Malaparte certainly knew of this the marble’s significant history within the region, and his choice to use it here suggests a strong connection to Italy’s artistic heritage.

Malaparte’s desk—a construction of glass and tuff stone—is an unembellished ode to old-world materials and style filtered through the lens of streamlined modernist aesthetics. Two large cylinders of the volcanic stone form its legs, meticulously carved with a classic fluted pattern—a decorative device that recalls the classical architecture for which Italy is so famous, but also one that encourages a play of light. Landing on the ridges and curving around the grooves of the hollow channels, light becomes an active element of the piece.

The Malaparte sofa is perhaps the most iconic piece from the villa. Malaparte Design is revisiting the famed sofa in a new, limited edition in collaboration with Philippe Pérès, a master craftsman and furniture maker and a renowned figure in the world of avant-garde design. Here, the pair specifically re-creates the sofa made famous in Contempt—with its electric blue slipcover, chosen by Godard himself to complement Malaparte’s original furniture design—which has since become emblematic of both the film and the villa in which most of it was set.