Decorative painter Nicolas Valle recently completed one such ceiling for designer Nina Farmer, who tapped him to paint an intricate geometric display in a soon-to-be dining room. Valle spent nearly a year devising multiple samples before landing on the final pattern, which boasts Escher-like cubes mixed with a Greek key style border. The beams’ rough texture posed a design challenge—“it was hard to get those crisp lines and tiny details,” says Valle—but the contrast of the coarse surface with such fine detail gives it character. Valle’s tenacity, it turns out, comes from a melting pot of experimentation and experience. He’s self-taught and used his own furniture as a canvas in the early days, but credits his late partner, production designer Ferdinando Scarfiotti (whose work included films like Death in Venice and The Last Emperor) as a key influence. These days Valle works with designers like Farmer, Commune and Studio Shamshiri, who all champion the power of artisans to customise their projects.