Sassu, and others) he produced various sketches and drawings for the Esino Lario School of Tapestries. From 1939 he began to publish his works in the design and architecture magazine Domus, edited at the time by Gio Ponti. From 1940 to 1942 he designed almanacs on the commission of Gio Ponti himself. The first three almanacs, small publications designed and printed using previously unpublished themes, which started life as Christmas gifts, would inspire a longer series beginning immediately after the war and ending in 1950. On paper, ideas were born, themes emerged, and characters were defined for a variety of subjects. At the origin of Fornasetti's success, and its furniture and objects, was precisely that production of graphic images and drawings that represent its stylistic code. Called up on the outbreak of war, Piero initially managed to stay in Milan by procuring the job of decorating the Sant'Ambrogio barracks. Later, in 1943, he took refuge in Switzerland, where he continued his artistic research and produced posters and lithographs for theatrical events and magazines. This period represented an unprecedented opportunity for him, during which he created oil portraits, watercolours, drawings in Indian ink, ink and ballpoint pen, devoting himself to the study of the human body, which he would later draw on in his production of decorative graphic arts. During the same period he created the sets and some promotional materials for Albert Camus' Caligula directed by Giorgio Strehler. This is the period when his relationship with Gio Ponti also became closer. Their work together, which, on his return to Milan, would produce important concepts of interiors and furnishing, design and decoration for houses, apartments, ship cabins or cinema auditoria, was so felicitous that it would eventually induce Gio Ponti to declare: The Fifties: Lina Cavalieri and the "Tema e Variazioni" series With the advent of the Fifties, the creative duo of Ponti and Fornasetti were able to put their point of view into practice: a home interior and furnishing style that they had long been promoting in theory. A method that envisages "the specific functionality of rooms and furniture, the simplicity and sincerity of forms and materials", the worship of sun, air, and light, and unity of aspiration for all social categories." At the beginning of those years the couple designed and decorated the "Architettura" trumeau, exhibited at the IX Triennale in 1951 and then auctioned in 1998 at Christie's