By Fionnuala McHugh

In March 1968, the United States Patent Office received an application filed by one Antonio Casadei of York Road, Kowloon Tong. It was a design for an inflatable sled that could transport goods across ice and snow. 

Cover 1966 Hong Kong Report.
Courtesy of Hong Kong Design Institute.

The subtropical address wasn’t the only unexpected aspect; Casadei, the hopeful inventor, was an artist in Hong Kong. His work could be seen in hotels and malls, and was already such a public attraction in Statue Square that the British colonial government had put it on the cover of its 1966 annual report. 

The sled application was granted in 1970 but expired in 1987. By then, Casadei was living in Spain. After 20 years’ residence, he’d left Hong Kong in 1983, the year he turned 60. When he gave a final interview to the South China Morning Post, the headline read: ‘The artist who’s left his mark on Hongkong’. “In Hongkong, evidence of his talent lies virtually wherever one looks,” wrote the interviewer. “Almost every hotel has something or other of his.”

Design for inflatable sled.

As Casadei moved on, so did the city. These days, unless you know where to look – a restaurant in Causeway Bay, a huge housing estate in Kowloon – his mark on Hong Kong has almost vanished. He liked to carve his name in the Roman style that font designers call Caesar Brute but only a few corners still exist where you can glimpse it. On his Statue Square work, his signature is half-submerged by the fountains, although he’d probably have liked that. He had a creative affinity with water (even when it was frozen). In other places around the city, it has long run dry.

His family came from Forli, in northern Italy, where Antonio was born in 1923. His father, Maceo, was a painter and is still remembered there; one of the town’s small galleries held an exhibition of his work in November 2022. It was jauntily titled Maceo Casadei – Always at Work!.

When Antonio was 11, the family moved to Rome, where Maceo became a photographer for the Istituto Luce, or Light Institute. It had been founded by Italy’s leader Benito Mussolini to supply fascist propaganda. In May 1938, when Adolf Hitler – along with Nazi heavyweights Joachim von Ribbentrop, Rudolf Hess and Joseph Goebbels – visited Mussolini for a week, Maceo photographed the full-on fascist spectacle. (Some of his original photos from those historic seven days were stolen by a collector and only returned to the institute’s archive, which is listed in Unesco’s Memory of the World register, in July 2022.) Later, always at work, he would document World War Two in photographs, paintings and drawings.

Photo of Mussolini and Hitler in Piazza di Santa Croce a Firenze, 1938. Maceo Casedei.
Courtesy of archiviole.com.

Antonio, who turned 18, the age of military service, in 1941, took part in the war. Forty years later, in an interview, he made a single vivid reference to witnessing an orphanage being bombed. (“The soldiers just threw the dead children out of the building into the street. I took the little bodies to a nearby hill and buried them.”) So little is known about him – so few people remember him from his two decades in Hong Kong, where he kept a low social profile – that it’s difficult to measure the effects of his war. Perhaps that was its effect.

He had inherited his father’s visual aptitude. In 1943, when he was 20, he won a national photographic prize; and after the war, in the late 1940s, he worked at Cinecittà, the Italian film studios, as a cameraman. Some of his work, including a short black-and-white film of Florence’s wonders called A Portrait Signed by God, is still available online. 

He painted, but ceramics were his real artistic love. By the 1950s, he was being commissioned to create large ceramic panels – in villas, in a corporate building, on a ship, in hotels – and he was also teaching art in Rome. There he met his future wife, Frances Wong, a former student of St Mary’s Canossian School in Hong Kong, who was studying art. As a result, he decided to visit Hong Kong in order to study Chinese porcelain.

In September 1962, Casadei – designated “a visiting artist” – held his first Hong Kong exhibition, at City Hall. (Frances Wong would have her own City Hall exhibition the following month.) It was opened by Luis Chan, then chairman of the Chinese Contemporary Artists’ Guild, and now recognised as Hong Kong’s most talented surrealist. Chan described him as “prolific and versatile”. 

The South China Morning Post agreed. Its anonymous reviewer liked the oil paintings, the decorated glass and the “striking” sculpture in metal, but their highest praise was reserved for the “rare and beautiful” ceramic creations in which the artist seemed to excel: “He is, indeed, a discovery.”

At the time, the Mandarin Hotel was in the process of being built and its design team were next to discover him. John D’Eathe was deputy estate manager at Hongkong Land, a company that usually built offices but had, a little nervously, decided it might experiment with a hotel. 

“There’s no doubt that the initial arts and design inspiration all came from Don Ashton,” remembers D’Eathe from his home in Vancouver. Ashton had been art director on David Lean’s The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) (he’d constructed the bridge), where he had learned to think in epic fashion. “When he arrived and started talking about design – and budgets – way beyond our parochial aspirations, the entire scene changed,” says D’Eathe. “We started to envisage a hotel wonderland, which then, for its day, was achieved.” 

John Howorth and Frank Eckermann of Leigh & Orange, the Hong Kong architectural firm founded in 1874, worked closely with Ashton. Casadei was commissioned to create bas-reliefs for what was called the Lookout Lounge; if you grew tired of looking out, you could always admire his huge beaming sunflowers on the ceiling. In the Clipper Lounge, the tables were traced with Casadei’s golden twirls. He worked from his studio in Kowloon Tong, where he was photographed for an issue of the new hotel’s in-house magazine. 

Mandarin Hotel, the Outlook Lounge, early 1960s Courtesy Leigh + Orange Archive.

He also made Chinese shadow puppets for its coffee shop. Now that his own time in the city is only the faintest outline, that seems appropriate; yet even when he was in Hong Kong, people never quite felt they knew him. “I think he would be pleased that I remember his art more clearly than his personality,” says D’Eathe. “He could speak a little English but he was not voluble like everyone else. The other guys were in some bar getting pissed. I do remember the odd coffee with him; he was a cheerful, burly young fellow. But, looking back, he was usually with one of the architects, who maybe spoke for him. So he was just that: an artistic presence hovering anxiously in the background, ensuring his art was appreciated.”

“I’d bump into him sometimes in the Mandarin,” says Brian Tilbrook, who became the Mandarin’s resident artist when it needed backdrops for events and who, now aged 91, still lives on Lamma. “He could be a bit churlish but he was more genial than Don Ashton, who was arrogant and not easy to talk to. I had great respect for Casadei’s work; he was worth his weight as an artist. Those panels he created were very effective.”

The Mandarin opened in 1963. Hongkong Land had another project, which would be unveiled to the public in 1965: a shopping mall in the newly rebuilt Prince’s Building, linked to the Mandarin by Hong Kong’s first pedestrian bridge. (The original Prince’s Building from 1904 had been designed by Leigh & Orange.) Casadei was hired to brighten the interior. He would turn up at meetings with sheaves of artistic possibilities. In honour of the building’s name, he focused on a regal theme – knights, kings, horses – mapping out designs that looked as if a medieval pack of cards were taking part in a chess game. 

But he was also a ceramicist with the mind of a modern inventor. He decided to experiment with polyester resins, a type of plastic which is good for laminating surfaces such as cars and boats. After he’d embellished 140 square metres of panelling with his royals – plus their shields and galleons and rampant lions – he coated each panel with Laminac resin to make its surface gleam like ancient bronze.    In the lobby hung what he claimed was “the world’s largest polyester chandelier” – seven metres long, two metres wide and five tons in weight. He’d made it from 528 pieces of cylinders, of varying length, so that it resembled a mass of stalactites and it glowed amber, red, white and yellow. “Polyester resin works in ways glass and crystal wouldn’t,” he told the South China Morning Post. “With its transparency, moldability, lustre and strength, it has great potential as a new art vehicle.”

He made that comment in December 1967 (three months before he filed his patent for the inflatable sled – vehicles were clearly on his active mind). By now, he had two children, Mara and Remo, and a stream of commissions. In 1969, his work in the new Hongkong Hotel – now the Marco Polo Hongkong Hotel – was on the cover of The Peninsula hotel’s magazine. (Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels, which owns The Peninsula, had the contract to manage it.) He made nine sculpted murals near the podium pool; he was inspired, he said later, by his underwater swimming. 

His work is still around. The iconic Tai Ping Koon restaurant in Causeway Bay opened in 1970, and a Casadei work still dominates one of its walls. The Tai Ping Koon group, which currently has four restaurants in Hong Kong, traces its origins back to Chui Lo-ko, who opened the first one in Guangzhou in 1860. Andrew Chui, his great-great-grandson, says his grandfather commissioned Casadei partly because he was famous and partly because he used to eat at the Wan Chai branch. As Tai Ping Koon is considered one of the world’s first Hong Kong-western restaurants (so-called “soy-sauce cuisine”), this artistic fusion with an Italian seems apt. 

Tai Ping Koon Restaurant mural with Andrew Chui’s grandfather, Causeway Bay 1970.
Courtesy Andrew Chui.

Apparently, people laughed because it was so expensive – the cost, it was said, of a Wan Chai flat – but Chui insisted. There’s a photo of Casadei at the opening; behind him, the swirling copper on fibreglass glows green and gold. In half a century, it’s darkened considerably and looms over diners but Chui says the customers still love it. If it ever had a title, he says, it’s been lost “like kitchen steam”.

By then, the Casadei family had moved to a remote house in Sai Kung, overlooking Hebe Haven, which had a duck pond, a monkey, some parrots and a fibreglass speedboat that Antonio had built himself to go fishing and diving. He’d also constructed his own shed and kiln where he could experiment with glazes and firing times. The South China Morning Post went to pay a visit one wet day in June 1970 and took a photo of him in flip-flops – not tall but broad-shouldered and square-headed – sandpapering a large fibreglass panel that represented, he said, the world under the sea. He spoke in Italian, translated by his wife.

He certainly needed the space and, perhaps, the isolation. When he was commissioned to create art for the new housing estate at Mei Foo, built from 1968 to 1978 on the old storage facilities of Mobil Oil, one of his works was an eight-metre stainless steel winged horse, Pegasus.  

Pegasus at Mei Foo Sun Chuen (circa 1970-1974), Kowloon, Hong Kong.
Photo: William Furniss

It was placed in a – now waterless – fountain. Its head rears up to the sky, ignoring its surroundings, still a magnificent beast. Nearby, an aquarium of distinctive fish, each face so cleverly contrived you feel you know its character, swims in the air above a bone-dry fountain.
   
A vibrant ceramic panel, similar to the Casadei work at Statue Square, sits in the fountain of another courtyard. At Mei Foo, it’s easy to read the chiselled signature: there’s no water lapping at the edges. 

Ceramic mural, Mei Foo Sun Chuen, 1970s. Photo: William Furniss

He died in Alicante, on Spain’s Costa Blanca, its white coast, on March 9, 2014. Some of the art from his Spanish years is for sale online; in his 80s, he was still making fish. Always at work, like his father. 

In Hong Kong, he has slipped away, like rain off a hillside. On a recent afternoon at Statue Square, a group of schoolchildren sat on a fountain wall, next to his panel. A guide gave them a lecture on the square’s history: Queen Victoria, the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, the former Supreme Court building. Asked by an onlooker if he knew who’d created the nearby artwork, the guide said no. Then he added, as a helpful afterthought: “Some artist.”

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1968年3月，居於九龍塘約克道的安東尼奧・卡薩迪向美國專利局提出申請，為一種可以在雪上運輸貨物的充氣雪橇設計申請專利。

除了卡薩迪當時使用的亞熱帶地址令人意想不到之外，這位滿懷希望的發明家更是一位香港藝術家。他的作品在酒店和商場隨處可見，他在皇后像廣場上的作品受到公眾關注，港英政府更將作品用作1966年年度報告的封面。

1970年，專利局批准了卡薩迪的雪橇申請，但申請於1987年到期，當時他居於西班牙。在香港住滿20年後，他於1983年以60歲之齡離港。《南華早報》與他最後一次採訪的標題為《在香港留下印記的藝術家》，記者提到：「他的才華在香港隨處可見，幾乎每間酒店都有他的作品。」

自卡薩迪離開後，香港也不斷前進。除非你特意去銅鑼灣的餐廳、九龍的大型屋邨找，否則他在香港的印記現在都幾乎消失不見。他喜歡以字型設計師稱為「Caesar Brute」的羅馬風格刻上自己的名字，但如今只有少數地方可以看到。他在皇后像廣場的作品簽名有一半被噴水池淹沒，不過他可能也不介意，因為他本身就很喜歡以水的主題創作（即使水結成冰亦然）。不過在城內其他地方，他的水源早就已經乾涸。

卡薩迪的家人以意大利北部的弗利為家，他於1923年在當地出生。其父親馬塞奧是一名畫家，至今仍為人所銘記。2022年11月，鎮上有一間小畫廊舉辦了他的作品展覽，展名為「馬塞奧．卡薩迪– Always at Work！」。

卡薩迪11歲時舉家搬到羅馬，馬塞奧成為了盧斯資料館的攝影師。資料館由意大利領導人貝尼托．墨索里尼創立，旨在宣傳法西斯。1938年5月，希特拉與納粹重量級人物里賓特洛甫、魯道夫赫斯和戈培爾一起訪問墨索里尼，為期一週，當時馬塞奧拍攝了全面的法西斯場面。一位收藏家偷走了他在這歷史性7日拍攝的一些原相，直到2022年7月才歸還給資料館內被列入聯合國教科文組織世界記憶名錄的檔案室。後來他更透過照片、繪畫和素描紀錄第二次世界大戰。

1941年，18歲的卡薩迪達到服兵役的年紀，於是他參與了第二次世界大戰。在四十年後的一次採訪中，他曾生動地提及自己目睹孤兒院被炸的經歷（「士兵從大樓把去世的小孩扔到街上，我就把這些細小的屍體帶到附近的山上埋葬。」）。人們對他所知甚少，很少人記得他曾在香港生活了二十年，他在香港社會低調生活，因此很難衡量戰爭對他的影響，但也許這正正就是影響。

他繼承了父親於視覺上的天賦。1943年，20歲的他獲得了國家攝影獎。戰後，即40年代後期，他在意大利電影製片廠奇尼奇塔擔任攝影師。他的作品至今仍然可以在網上找到，包括一部講述佛羅倫斯奇觀的黑白短片《A Portrait Signed by God》。

雖說他會畫畫，但陶瓷才是他最愛的藝術創作方式。到了50年代，他受委託在別墅、公司大樓、船和酒店創作大型的瓷板，當時他亦有在羅馬教藝術。在那裡他遇到當時正鑽研藝術、曾就讀香港嘉諾撒聖瑪利學校的妻子Frances Wong，影響他後來決定去香港學習中國瓷器。

1962年9月，被指定為「客席藝術家」的卡薩迪在大會堂舉辦了他在香港的首次展覽，而Frances Wong亦在翌月舉辦自己的大會堂展覽。展覽由時任華人現代藝術研究會會長陳福善主持開幕，現在被公認為香港最有才華的超現實主義者陳福善曾形容他「作品豐富且多才多藝」。

《南華早報》亦很同意他的觀點，報章的匿名評論者表示喜歡藝術家的油畫、裝飾玻璃和「引人注目」的金屬雕塑，但他們更對藝術家擅長的「稀有、美麗」的陶瓷創作讚不絕口，認為「他絕對是個重要的發現。」

當時文華酒店正在興建，酒店的設計團隊發現了他的作品。香港置地的時任地產副經理名為John D’Eathe，集團一般都只是興建辦公室，後來卻戰戰兢兢地決定嘗試建造酒店。

John D’Eathe在溫哥華的家中回憶道：「毫無疑問，最初的藝術和設計靈感都是來自Don Ashton的。」Don Ashton曾擔任大衛．連《桂河橋》（1957年）的藝術總監，電影中的這座橋就是由他所建造的，在電影的拍攝過程中他學會了以宏觀的方式思考。John D’Eathe說：「他一來到就開始談起一些遠超我們狹窄的設計和預算的計劃，就在那時候所有事情開始不同。我們開始想建造一個酒店仙境，而最終更實現了這個想法。」

香港建築公司利安顧問有限公司於1874年成立，公司的John Howorth和Frank Eckermann與Don Ashton有密切的合作關係。卡薩迪受委託為Lookout Lounge製作淺浮雕，如果不想再看著窗外，你可以選擇欣賞天花板上巨大閃亮的向日葵，快船廊的桌上亦裝飾著卡薩迪的金色旋轉圖案。他在九龍塘的工作室內創作了這些作品，亦在那裡為新酒店的內部雜誌拍攝了其中一期照片。

他還為酒店的咖啡館製作了中國皮影。時移世易，現在他在這座城市裡剩下模糊的輪廓也很合理，但即使他當時在香港，人們也不覺得自己很了解他。John D’Eathe說：「我對他的藝術比他的個性更有印象，這樣說我覺得他反而會很高興。他會說一點英文，但沒有其他人那麼健談，我記得有些人會在酒吧裡吵鬧。我記得曾經和他一起喝過咖啡，他是一個開朗、魁梧的年輕人。回想起來他時常和一位建築師一起，那位建築師會幫他說話，所以他就是一位會在背後緊張地踱步的藝術家，希望聽到自己的藝術受到讚賞。」

白賴恩．陶布力說道：「我有時會在文華酒店遇到他。」當文華酒店需要為活動設置背景時，白賴恩．陶布力就會成為駐場藝術家，現年91歲的他仍於南丫島居住。他續說：「他或許有點脾氣，但他比Don Ashton更和善，因為Don Ashton很高傲和難相處。我非常尊重卡薩迪的作品，他的藝術成就實至名歸，而他創作的那些面板亦給人很深刻的印象。」

文華酒店於1963年開業，當時香港置地還有另一個項目會於1965年向公眾揭幕，那就是當時剛重建的太子大廈內的購物中心，透過香港第一座行人天橋與文華酒店相連（原本的太子大廈於1904年由利安顧問有限公司設計）。卡薩迪獲聘點綴室內設計，他總會在開會時提出豐富的藝術可能性。為了紀念這座建築的名字，他以皇室作為主題，使用騎士、國王、馬等元創作，看似一副中世紀啤牌在參加國際象棋比賽。

他亦是一位具有現代發明家頭腦的陶藝家，他以用於層壓汽車和船隻表面的塑料聚酯樹脂，在他的皇室成員、盾牌、帆船和獅子上裝飾14,500平方呎的鑲板，然後在每塊鑲板上塗上成型用聚酯樹脂，令表面像古代青銅一樣閃閃發光。

大廳裡掛著他聲稱「全世界最大的聚酯水晶吊燈」，吊燈長七米、寬兩米、重五噸，由528個不同長度的圓柱體製作而成，看起來像一團鐘乳石，發出琥珀色、紅色、白色和黃色的光芒。他曾向《南華早報》提到：「聚酯樹脂的特質是玻璃和水晶沒有的，這種新的藝術載體的透明度、可塑性、光澤和強度都有很大的潛力。」

他於1967年12月發表了以上的評論，並在三個月後提交了充氣雪橇專利申請，明顯地交通工具是他喜歡探索的題材。那時他育有Mara和Remo兩個孩子，還會收到源源不斷的佣金。1969年，他在馬哥孛羅香港酒店的作品登上了半島酒店雜誌的封面（擁有半島酒店的香港上海大酒店同時擁有該酒店的管理合約）。他在平台水池附近製作了九幅雕刻壁畫，靈感來自於他的游泳經驗。

他的作品至今仍然存在，銅鑼灣著名的太平館餐廳於1970年開業，餐廳的其中一面牆上至今仍掛著卡薩迪的作品。太平館集團目前在香港有四間餐廳，集團起源可以追溯至於1860年在廣州開設第一間餐廳的徐老高。他的玄孫徐錫安說，祖父委託卡薩迪創作，一方面是因為他很有名，另一方面是因為他會在灣仔分店吃飯。太平館被認為是世上其中一間最早期的港式西餐廳（又稱「豉油西餐」），感覺很適合與意大利的藝術融合。

人們都笑說作品不值，因為它的價格太高昂，據說差不多是一間灣仔公寓的價格，但他仍然堅持委託。餐廳內有一張卡薩迪出席開幕典禮的照片，身後的玻璃纖維上旋轉的銅發出金綠色的光芒。半世紀過去，如今它已經暗淡了不少，籠罩在食客的面前，但徐錫安說食客依舊喜愛。他形容如果作品有名字，也已經「像廚房內的蒸汽一樣」，消失得無影無蹤。

那時卡薩迪一家搬到了西貢一座偏僻的房子，俯瞰著白沙灣，房子裡有一個鴨子池塘、一隻猴子、一些鸚鵡和他自己造的一艘玻璃纖維快艇，可以用來釣魚和潛水。他還建造了自己的廠房和窯爐，試驗不同的釉料和燒製時間。1970年6月的一個雨天，《南華早報》去拜訪他，拍了一張他穿著人字拖的照片。他的個子不高，但肩膀寬闊，頭形方正。他用砂紙打磨了一塊代表著他說是海底世界的玻璃纖維面板。他用意大利文接受訪問，由妻子進行翻譯。

他絕對需要空間，或者是那一份孤立感。他受委託為1968年至1978年在舊美孚石油公司倉儲設施上興建的美孚新邨創作，其中一件作品是一隻8米長的不銹鋼飛馬。

作品安裝在一個現已沒有水的噴水池中，頭部仰向天空，無視周邊一切，至今仍然是一隻威猛的野獸。附近有一個「水族館」，獨特的魚類在乾涸的噴水池上空游泳，每條魚的面目都設計得栩栩如生，彷彿可以看穿它們的性格。

另一個庭院的噴水池中有一塊活力十足的陶瓷面板，與卡薩迪於皇后像廣場的作品非常相似。美孚的作品很容易看到藝術家的簽名，因為沒有流水的阻擋。

2014年3月9日，他在西班牙白色海岸的阿利坎特離世。他將在西班牙創作的一些藝術品放在網上出售，到八十多歲時，他還在創作魚類有關的主題。虎父無犬子，兩父子總是停不了創作。

他在香港的印記彷彿被山坡上的雨沖洗了。近日某個下午，皇后像廣場有一群小學生坐在他的面板旁邊的噴水池牆上，導遊向他們介紹廣場的歷史：包括維多利亞女皇、香港上海匯豐銀行、舊最高法院大樓等。有位旁觀者問導遊附近的藝術品是誰創作的，他說不知道，然後補充是「某位藝術家」。