Craft and Abstraction
Gabriella Crespi
“[Gabriella Crespi’s furniture designs] have remarkable powers of seduction even though at first sight they can disconcert the unprepared (or prejudiced) visitor because they are apparently contradictory. Yet they are, in their own way, perfectly postmodern in their extremely elegant critique, with their massive solidity, of the fragility of the modern: of the fragility of modern furniture. Postmodern because they are furnishings that yield to the lure of solidity, of specific weight, to the appeal of archeology and, at times, exoticism, the fruit of her many journeys to every part of the world.” — Vanni Scheiwiller
Best known for her striking furniture designs of the 1960s and 70s, the Italian artist and designer Gabriella Crespi (1922-2017) created interiors for the wealthiest, most au courant people in the world, including Gunter Sachs, Grace Kelly and the Shah of Persia. A mythical figure of Italian creativity, ahead of her time, Crespi’s style epitomises the louche, international, jet-set milieu of the 1970s. Known for her glamour and celebrity status as much as for her furniture, the Italian artist Francesco Vezzoli (b. 1971) described her as “the Greta Garbo of Milan”. Cultured, beautiful, elegant, Crespi invites comparisons with other soignée artists of the time, such as Veruschka (b. 1939) and Niki de Saint Phalle (1930-2002). A mix between Mid-Century Modern and the decorative arts traditions of the past (especially Art Nouveau and Art Deco), her lamps, coffee tables, and desks utilize futuristic, minimalist forms and geometries. An unexpected marriage of craft and abstraction, a unique duality exists in Crespi’s work, combining the rigor of geometry, ergonomics and functionality, with naturally sensuous lines and materials. Light was fundamental to her work, bouncing off the sculptural planes of her brass, steel and lacquer tables, animating them and making their surfaces appear almost as if in motion. In her hands, even humble materials – such as the bamboo she used, with its dynamic and sinewy structure – appear as if illuminated by some divine radiance: “My creations are meant to bring mankind closer to the universe”, she maintained.
Gabriella Crespi and her Kaleidoscopes (1970)
“Scultura” table, from the “Plurimi” series (c. 1980) by Gabriella Crespi
Born in Tuscany near Florence, into an aristocratic family, Crespi showed both aesthetic flair and practical intelligence from a young age. She inherited her taste for things beautiful from her mother Emma Caimi Pellini, a jewellery designer for Parisian haute couture and her solidity from her father, a mechanical engineer. She moved to Milan in 1944 to study fine art at the Liceo Artistico at the prestigious Accademi di Belle Arti di Brera and then architecture at the city’s Politecnico; a highly unconventional choice for a woman in the 1940s in Italy. As architect and designer Cini Boeri (b. 1924), herself a great protagonist of Italian design, recalls, women were positively discouraged from pursuing education in any skilled trade. Architecture was the business of men; women were not thought able to design, at the most they could become assistants or decorators. “She was so impulsive that she faced life without thinking too much about the consequences,” says her daughter Elisabetta Crespi, who has managed her late mother’s production since the 1970s and now also runs the Archivio Gabriella Crespi. “Her passion for her work helped her to overcome any obstacles. I remember her as always being in movement — a volcano of ideas, with her sketchbook always at hand.” She garnered a fascination with the seminal work of Le Corbusier (Charles-Édouard Jeanneret) (1887–1965) and Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959), drawing from their modernist ideals and aesthetics for her early architectural work. Soon, though, her focus shifted from architecture to design. Crespi’s first series of projects produced in the 1950s was the Small Lune Collection, a series crescent-shaped steel sculptures and lighting objects, inspired by the phases of the moon.
Quickly shifting gears, in the 1960s she established an enthusiastic creative relationship with Maison Dior, creating home accessories and furniture. The prototype of her first Plurimo (a conceptual piece of furniture that experimented with shifting forms for multiple uses) was exhibited in Dallas, Texas, in 1968, the first step on an international circuit of exhibitions, between Europe, the United States, South America and the Middle East, that helped to consolidate Crespi’s reputation and that of her creations outside the borders of Italy. It’s success spurred Crespi to collaborate with her daughter, Elisabetta, on a larger series on the theme, named Plurimi, as a tribute to Italian painter Emilio Vedova (1919-2006). Described by Elisabetta as “a series of tables made of polished, shiny golden brass”, the Plurimi series made Crespi’s name. Created in the manner of “metamorphic” furniture, these pieces (including the Scultura table and the Magic Cube bar cabinet (both 1970)) explore the interaction between space, volume and movement. Characterised by a clean curved line and polished brass, they reveal Crespi’s ability to blur the lines between furniture and sculpture and between function and design, resulting in poetic machines, or rather, rational works of art. Of course, as a concrete and expert designer, Crespi does not forget that furniture has to be functional; indeed some of her most famous pieces are multifunctional and can be rearranged with retractable elements, growing larger or smaller as the user desires. They are not merely ornamental objects, but intelligent systems for living.
"Z" desk with drawer unit (1975) by Gabriella Crespi
Console with table lamp from the “Rising Sun” collection (c. 1970) by Gabriella Crespi
“When I asked my mother what her main source of inspiration was, she would always reply ‘the Universe’,” remembers Elisabetta. “She felt strongly connected to it and was keenly aware of its silent, precise movement and continuous transformation.” Crespi’s affinity for unexpected and disparate material combinations reflected her Eastern religious belief that seemingly contrary forces are interconnected, interdependent and complementary. In 1973 she began work on her Rising Sun collection (1973-1975), which featured bamboo “rays” radiating from a central golden “sun”. Strikingly different to her brass and lacquer designs, this collection expanded to include many types of home décor, such as platters, bassinets, and screens. Yet she also worshipped handcrafts, and imposed on herself the severe discipline of having each piece she produced made entirely by hand.
Crespi was a skilled technician and designed ingenious mechanisms, that, for example, made table leaves and cabinet doors unfurl smoothly. Though some of her prototypes required industrial processing, they were never mass produced; she always worked with small scale producers — those Italian craftsmen and artisans who were most capable of realising her vision to the highest standards. Her works were never made in series — each one was different — and almost every piece was signed and numbered, which accounts for the rarity of the genuine pieces. (The Italian industrial designer Vico Magistretti (1920-2006) used to say proudly that all it took was a phone call to describe a product to the craftsman who had to make its prototype. That it’s the idea that counts, and then, knowing who will be able to realize it in the best possible way.) A forerunner to the many contemporary designers working in limited editions and returning to handcrafted production methods, Crespi showed great prescience in matters of taste. The demand for this sort of design work has exploded since the dawn of the new millennium, with an ever increasing desire for individuals to “curate” homes and offices with exceptional objects. Ergo, as the market for collectible design grows stronger, so does the drive to trace provenance and authenticity. In this sense Crespi’s work strikes us as a vital precedent.
Her glamorous apartment in the former Palazzo Cenci in Rome served as her showroom, where her esoteric furniture was set off against spectacular frescoes of Umbrian landscapes. Such juxtapositions of old and new were unusual at the time. “In 1963 we moved to Rome renting an 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,” says Elisabetta of her mother. “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 embraced all that was new, studying intelligent living systems and experimenting with the mutability of modern furniture. “When she realized that someone had only come to snoop, she would kick them out,” remembers her daughter Elisabetta. “One time a huge number of pieces forged by one of our delivery men was confiscated. It used to make her suffer. She said that this debased her brand.”
Both in her work and in her personal journey Crespi has repeatedly explored the theme of spirituality: her belief was that life was a matter of cycles. Once asked about her greatest pleasure, she replied, “Start anew from zero, this is my greatest pleasure.” In the mid-1980s, aged 63, Crespi gave her last interviews on her work as a designer, and by 1987 gave up her showrooms, warehouse, and her apartment in Rome, before abandoning design and traveling to India to study with Sri Muniraji, her spiritual advisor, with whom she would spend the next two decades. At the time, Crespi was at the zenith of her success and her client list and social circle included Audrey Hepburn, Hubert de Givenchy, Gunter Sachs, Gianni Versace, Princess Marina of Savoy, Queen Paola of Belgium, and the Royal families from Persia and Qatar. Living in a small village in the Himalayas, Crespi practised meditation and yoga and spoke little, returning to Italy only twice a year. “I have always considered my independence in my work as well as in my life as one of my biggest achievements,” Crespi told the Wall Street Journal Magazine in 2015. While visiting her family in Milan in 2006 she fell and broke her femur and felt it was like a new cycle beginning, and returning to Italy she wrote her book Ricerca di Infinito, Himalaya (Research of the Infinite, Himalaya).
New exhibitions were mounted, and new collaborations begun, which included a collection of shoes for Sergio Rossi and a limited reissue of five of her pieces of jewellery from the 1970s, realized in copper alloy by the lost-wax process and coated with twenty-four-carat gold, with inserts of quartz, semiprecious stones and ancient fossils, produced in collaboration with Stella McCartney. In 2012, in response to the vast circulation of counterfeits, Crespi established an archive of her works, cataloguing more than two thousand creations. Her last realized design was the beautifully undulating Wave Desk (2016) from the New Bronze Age series, in Crespi’s signature gilt metal. But then she was gone. An icon of Italian mid-century design, Crespi left her mark on the world both through her poetic, sculptural designs and her ethereal persona. An artist who stood out from the mainstream, Crespi distinguished herself for the originality of the objects she designed, creating archetypes and items of furniture that offered new ways of seeing contemporary design.
A prophet for new direction in design, Crespi had an extraordinary ability to transform objects from mere functionality into quasi beings themselves. Whist most designers were exploring novel man-made materials and futuristic, plastic forms, Crespi favoured designs that bespoke tradition and quality. Channelling the spirit of mid-century modern design, with its streamline forms, Crespi used the rarest and most expensive materials and constructions available to create unique pieces that were as functional as they were aesthetically exceptional. “She was a woman, she was an aristocrat, she was wealthy,” explains Italian artist Francesco Vezzoli. “But today, in this post-ideological moment, all the things that would have worked against her are no longer valid. People look at the work, and they want to buy it because it’s so special”