BREAKING #331

The shape of clouds

Nicole Ex

Column

August 2026

Nicole Ex

is a writer, art historian, and founder of See All This art magazine. Since 2020, she writes a weekly column for the BREAKING-the-week art newsletter.

Column

August 2026

We arrive at a modest hotel in Modena just before the cloudburst. We throw open the windows of our adjoining rooms – the nylon curtains billow, the shutters slam against their hinges. We look out over a drama of wind, clouds, lightning and rain, where a woman clings to her upturned umbrella.

The good news is that this hotel, on the outskirts of the city, lies less than five minutes from the workshop of architect and furniture maker Carlo Maria Morsiani. It is close enough for us to brave the crossing. His studio is lit by the eerie glow of the storm, making his handcrafted furniture seem even more cinematic than it already is.

His modular round table, together with the monumental desk he designed for the gallerist Emilio Mazzoli, would have justified the detour. The desk has since been shipped to Switzerland, so we have to make do with photographs. Fortunately, his distinctive bookcase, built from reclaimed timber, is still there. So too are the chess set he is developing and a series of aluminium bookends engraved with the names of clouds.

How could we not end up talking about clouds on an afternoon like this? Carlo Maria tells us there are ten official cloud genera, each with its own pictogram, which became the basis for his designs. Ever since seeing On the Disappearance of Clouds by Tomás Saraceno at the 2019 Venice Biennale, I have known that even clouds cannot be taken for granted.

Feather clouds (Cirrus).
A mackerel sky (Cirrocumulus).
Thin veils (Cirrostratus).
Mid-level cloud fields (Altocumulus).
Grey layers (Altostratus).
Rain clouds (Nimbostratus).
Rolling banks (Stratocumulus).
Mist (Stratus).
Towering heaps (Cumulus).
Thunderclouds (Cumulonimbus).

As though, through Carlo, the sky – which had always been there – had finally introduced itself to me.

— Nicole Ex,
founding editor

De boekensteun {{Altocumulus}} (links) en {{Altostratus}}(rechts) in de studio van Carlo Maria Morsiani, Modena, juli 2026 | foto: Nicole Ex

Fig 1. Bookends Altocumulus (left) and Altostratus(right) in the studio of Carlo Maria Morsiani, Modena, July2026 | photo: Nicole Ex

MORSIANI ELEMENTI X SEE ALL THIS
LIMITED EDITION

Architect Carlo Maria Morsiani (1985) designed a series of handmade aluminium bookends, based on the ten official cloud genera named and classified in 1803 by English meteorologist Luke Howard.

The Altocumulus and Altostratus bookends are now available to pre-order in our shop.

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