Albeit not revolutionary, her vision stands out as unique, blurring as it did the lines between the haute bourgeois taste for expensive cosmopolitan decor and the rules of modern design. Her oeuvre exudes the allure and polish of an aristocratic grande dame and the soulful spirit of an inspired, gifted mind. Indeed, dichotomies define her work, which was both exotic and stylish, and pure and baroque—a perfect fusion of force and finesse. One could perhaps trace in her creations hints of Pierre Cardin’s space-age ’70s furniture, and Claude and Francois-Xavier Lalanne’s surrealist bestiaries, created in the same years, echo her fondness for rare animal species, translated in a decorative series of luxurious figurines. Yet Crespi’s antennae were definitely attuned to a different wavelength, picking up more elusive creative frequencies.
In 2018, when a certain soulless design aesthetic shows signs of fatigue, Crespi’s work is more relevant than ever. Her limited-edition pieces are sought after by collectors and dealers, and designers are crazy about her peculiar vision. “Her style is definitely inspiring,” says Dimore Studio’s Emiliano Salci. “She had extraordinary taste, and her work was deeply personal, stemming from her inner passions and lifestyle. She was modern and daring, almost radical in her propositions. From her innate allure to the furniture she designed, everything was sophisticated yet unconventional, with a warm, human, sensuous feel to it. She was genius.”
Born in Milan in 1922 to a distinguished family, she married the young scion of the aristocratic Crespi clan, owners of the Corriere della Sera daily newspaper. “My mother was a force of nature,” says her soft-spoken daughter Elisabetta, who was head of production and now guards her legacy through the Crespi Archive. A year after her mother’s passing, Elisabetta decided to celebrate her, opening the family penthouse at one of Milan’s chicest addresses. During Salone del Mobile in April, guests were allowed a rare glimpse into Gabriella Crespi’s private apartment. It was an emotional experience. “I wanted to honor and protect my mother’s creativity and achievements,” Elisabetta says. “I’d like for her work to be known and respected. Instead of a predictable exhibition, I wanted people to spend a day with her, having a closer, intimate look at her lifestyle, her spaces, her creations, as if almost feeling her presence.”
The beautiful, airy apartment is exactly as Gabriella left it. Her powerful bronze sculpture, My Soul, is still displayed the way she liked on the priceless first edition of her Ellisse table; her signature wide-brim hats rest on one of her famous Rising Sun bamboo chairs together with her treasured Indian embroidered coat. On an antique chest of drawers, the Lune lamp is surrounded by family portraits. Gabriella Crespi’s spirit is still very much alive.
A sophisticated, stylish Milanese womanMy mother’s style was always very spontaneous. She was naturally elegant and didn’t follow fashion; she favored a cultivated simplicity, utterly Milanese. During her many travels, she liked to shop for exotic finds, which she mixed with couture pieces. In the ’70s, she used to wear simple cotton tunics from Bali, embroidered peasant blouses, and ikat woven caftans and kurtas from India, paired with fashionable bell bottoms or long skirts, but she also indulged in elegant tenues de soirée, which her social life often required. I remember her in a magnificent haute couture Roberto Capucci long cape, which she wore in Madrid during one of her openings, where she presented her collections of objects and furniture to society friends and buyers. I had accompanied her there, and I have vivid memories of how naturally regal she looked, as if she were born wearing that cape.
She had a magnetic presence, great charisma, and she was blessed with a strong, beautiful body; even at 85 she was turning heads at the beach! She adored wearing theatrical hats, which actually protected her from the acute pain of migraines; they became her signature style. Being effortlessly soigné was part of her upbringing, and she couldn’t help but look immaculate, even when wearing the simplest white cotton sari for her daily meditations, up in the tiny village in the Himalayas, which for 20 years she called home.
A passion for art, architecture, and natureThe need for artistic expression was always very strong for my mother. My grandmother, Emma Caimi Pellini, was an haute couture jewelry designer and a woman of great creativity and taste, but my grandfather was a mechanical engineer. My mother was a perfect blend of artistic flair and technical exactitude; she had an eye for beauty as well as for functionality, a very Milanese attitude. She patented all the mechanisms that made her sculptural cabinets open like clamshells, and her tables extend elliptical wings, like futuristic spaceships.
She studied art at Milan’s Brera Academy of Fine Arts; then she decided to enroll at the Faculty of Architecture at Milan’s Politecnico Institute. It was a quite unconventional choice at that time; in the ’40s a career in architecture (or almost any career, for that matter) wasn’t really considered suitable for a woman of her social milieu, but my mother was very headstrong. She was very much her own woman. Even in her work, it’s difficult to trace overt influences from other designers. She loved Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, though, probably because they both considered nature fundamental to their projects. In all her houses, my mother never let curtains or screens block the natural flow of light and air. She had a deep sentiment for the cosmic energy of nature. When asked what her inspiration was, she always answered: “My inspiration is the Universe.”
An aristocratic jet-setter and a spiritually driven designerMy mother never stopped drawing; her sketchbook followed her everywhere. She was inexhaustible, almost consumed by an impulse to create; she felt that she was channeling a higher form of energy, much stronger than herself.
In the ’50s, she started creating a series of small objects as gifts for her girlfriends, presse-papiers or boxes or tableware or decorative animals, expensive-looking and made in precious wood, velvet, and silver, often decorated with poetic phrases that she used to compose, on their surfaces. They were pièces uniques, very chic, a bit baroque, with a peculiar energy, and from the very beginning they turned into objects of desire, so much so that the Maison Dior immediately bought them for its Paris boutique. She then opened a showroom in Milan’s city center, which later on was moved to a fabulous space in Via Montenapoleone.
When my parents separated in 1963, my brother Gherardo and I moved to Rome together with my mother; she rented a magnificent apartment in the historical Palazzo Cenci, a magical place with frescoed walls and ceilings dating from the 15th century. She established her showroom there as well, which she decorated with a stylish, very modern eye, her objects and furniture making for a striking contrast with the sumptuous atmosphere of those divine rooms. She definitely anticipated a decorating trend which has now become commonplace. All the Roman aristocracy was in love with her, they flocked to Palazzo Cenci, intrigued by her creations as much as by her charisma and beauty.
She was at the center of an intense social life. Audrey Hepburn and Hubert de Givenchy were regulars, always visiting together. The sister of the Shah of Iran was partial to the most spectacular pieces, with which she decorated her brother’s imperial summer residence in Mauritius Island; she particularly liked my mother’s signature herons, made in bronze with the traditional lost-wax casting technique, then coated with a 24 karat gold patina.Gunther Sachs bought an entire army of miniature hippos, cast in bronze and ivory, their bellies hiding handblown glass eggs made in Murano. Gianni Versace also visited often, as well as Princess Marina of Savoy, Queen Paola of Belgium, and Qatari princes and princesses of all kinds.
She obviously loved all her glamorous friends and clients, but she was truly devoted to her skilled craftsmen, to whom she remained faithful and grateful for all her life. My mother was not an industrial designer; her production was intended for cultivated, sophisticated people with high taste; her production was limited, handcrafted, and niche. She became famous in the ’70s with her line of furniture, Plurimi, a series of tables made of polished, shiny golden brass. One of her most successful was the Ellisse table; created in 1974, its elliptical lines were extremely pure and sleek, a bit futuristic but graced with her typical sensuous feel. It really looked like an otherworldly asteroid. But she wasn’t afraid of contrasts. Hence her penchant for less precious, more flexible and humble materials, like the bamboo, which she used for one of her most coveted designs, the Rising Sun table, which had an almost Eastern feel to it, same as the bamboo and brass side tables with pivoting lotus leaves. Antique dealers and collectors now fight over these items at auctions, where they fetch astronomic sums; they were produced by artisans in very limited quantities, so the original pieces are very difficult to find.
A free, indomitable spiritWhen she was 65, my mother decided to leave for India; she lived there for 20 years, from 1987 until 2007. She was at the pinnacle of her success, everything was going extremely well. She had been celebrated in 1982 with an exhibition at Milan’s Museo della Scienza e della Tecnica. But the spiritual pull was too strong for her to abide; underneath her glamorous social persona, her spiritual life had always been profound. The quest for a deeper meaning for existence and her belief of belonging to a wider universal energy were reclaiming her.
She absolutely could not be stopped, and we respected her decision, even if obviously it was all quite discombobulating! In only two months, we had to shut down completely her everyday operations; it was tabula rasa. Even if I was in charge of the production of all her collections, we couldn’t have possibly carried on without her, it was out of the question. She was the force, the heart. She left, happy and with the enthusiasm of a teenager.
In India she started from scratch a whole different life, following a group of acolytes of the famous Hindu yogi Babaji, living in a small village in the Uttar Pradesh region in the Himalayas. There she met her spiritual master, Shri Muniraji, a reincarnation of Guru Dattatreya. Twice a year she visited us here in Milan, but as soon as she landed, she already longed to go back to her simple life of meditation, karma yoga, and silence. In normal families, the sons are usually the ones eager to leave the nest and travel as far as possible from it; for us, it was exactly the other way round! I know that for her it was a hard, high-spirited decision, which she never regretted or questioned.
She let her spiritual experience be known in a book, In Search of Infinity—Himalaya, first published in 2007, that traces her chosen path through her thoughts, poems, and meditations. A few days before her passing, she read it all over again in just one go. “After all, it isn’t too bad,” she said.
Her final journeyUp until she was 85, my mother always left for India with her backpack and sleeping bag as her only luggage. But unfortunately, during one of her visits here, she badly fell, stumbling on a pile of suitcases that a bellboy had accidentally dropped; she couldn’t travel anymore. She surrendered to her fate, as her long spiritual practice had taught her; but being indomitable, she started a new life here again, opening a new creative chapter.
She was back living in this apartment that she adored, decorated with her beloved souvenirs and with her furniture first editions. While continuing her spiritual practice, she worked on a series of limited reeditions of her most famous creations, experimenting with different materials: The Ellisse and Dama tables, the Z desk and the Yang Yin bar cabinet were presented in 2015 during Milan’s Salone del Mobile. She was 93, and spoke very little because of her vow of silence, but she was still beautiful, always wonderfully dressed in shades of white and pearls, her powerful charisma intact. Her urge to express herself artistically was still stronger than anything else.
She passed away peacefully on February 14, 2017, the same day that the Hindu yogi Babaji apparently passed away in 1984. Once, when asked what her greatest pleasure in life was, she answered: “Start anew from zero, this is my greatest pleasure.”
