Quite apart from the star turns and ragù of Italian accents, Ridley Scott’s 2021 biopic House of Gucci — which follows the family behind the Italian fashion empire from the 1970s through the 1990s — serves up a visual feast for design and couture obsessives.
Among the most covetable set pieces is the oversize desk Maurizio Gucci, played by Adam Driver, commands in meetings with Tom Ford and Anna Wintour. Just shy of 12 feet long, with a curvaceous stainless-steel base and a highly reflective orange-lacquered wood top, it was commissioned by Scott, who had fallen in love with the Bangles table by Francesco Barberini, of the Italian architecture and furniture atelier Barberini & Gunnell, and envisioned a custom version.
“We knew that Maurizio Gucci was a collector of contemporary art and design,” says firm partner Nina A. Gunnell. “Mirror-polished stainless steel is a material used in that period, and the color of the tabletop is as strong as his personality and feels very Gucci indeed.”
Barberini & Gunnell is offering the signed one-of-a-kind piece — “complete with some light scratches where Adam Driver sat on it,” Gunnell notes — on 1stDibs Auctions. “We like the way remarkable design is celebrated on the platform,” she explains. “And we’re happy to show an artwork like this to a larger audience who understands and collects design.”
Along with the commission, Scott’s team sent reference photos of vintage Gucci accessories in a signature shade of orange to Barberini & Gunnell, whose clients include Cartier, Dior and Louis Vuitton. The studio’s artisans produced the piece by hand, completing the process — which normally takes six to eight weeks, even without color-matched lacquer on both the tabletop and the underside — in a mere 17 days.
In House of Gucci, Barberini’s design is paired harmoniously with Barcelona chairs and a Cobra table lamp by Elio Martinelli. “Tables normally live off the beauty of their tops,” Gunnell says. “The Bangles design came from the wish to create a base from a chain of rings that are stable enough to carry a heavy top without disturbing the leg space of people sitting around the table. It is very lyrical — all drama, with no decoration.”
