Pinpointing Maltese-born, London-based interior designer Francis Sultana’s sense of style can prove elusive. Is it classic futurism, futuristic neoclassicism, or something else entirely?

“Either of those are quite a good way of putting it,” he says with a laugh, sitting on a striped sofa of his own design in the grand salon of his 16th-century Palazzo de Torres home in Valletta, Malta. A wildly abstract oil-and-gouache painting by Secundino Hernández hangs above his head.