MILAN — Wearing her signature bespoke silk turban, Milan design doyenne Nina Yashar articulated how a performance illustrating her gallery‘s 10-year lifespan will come to life.

On Tuesday, she will celebrate the first decade of Nilufar Depot’s existence with a live show by her friend, London-based designer Martino Gamper, in the atrium of her well-known space. “Gamper will interact with midcentury furniture and recreate new stories with materials that become something brand new,” she said.

With its two locations — one on Viale Lancetti, and her historic gallery on Via della Spiga — Nilufar has helped build the success of both established and new designers by housing their creations under her roof. Over the last four decades Yashar, the daughter of a Persian antique carpet dealer, has forged many relationships in the design world. Pieces by renowned designers such as Luigi Caccia Dominioni, Bruno Mathsson, Alvar Aalto and Gamper, along with emerging names like Christian Pellizzari, have all passed through the doors of her galleries. With more than 300 objects on display at any time, her “living museum” is credited with chronicling the ongoing artistic era. 

Becoming a Business

Looking ahead, Yashar told WWD that the next 10 years will be focused on growing her exclusive in-house Nilufar Editions collection, which launched in 2023 and of which she is the creative director. The line has grown by an average of 15 to 20 percent year-on-year since it was launched as a way to offer a piece of Nilufar’s taste to a broader public. Pieces are priced more moderately than collectible works found in her gallery, she said, at a range of 2,000 to 30,000 euros, excluding customization costs.

“For a certain standpoint, it’s more accessible and maintains this essence of artful craftsmanship and it’s a way for me to make Nilufar accessible in other markets to expand into key geographic areas like the Middle East,” she said, adding that the region is one of her strongest markets.

An economic boom in capitals like Doha, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, driven by an influx of high-net-worth residents and increased development of luxury residences and hotels, is fueling sales of collectible art and design in the region across the board.

New Frontiers

Likewise, Nilufar’s aim is to open regional offices in key cities to interface with the booming contract and luxury hotel businesses in those areas, as well as in Asian capitals like Singapore and Seoul. 

“This is the moment to grow on an operating level,” she said. Pop-up events have been a major driver for business across the globe. In March, Yashar and Nilufar partnered with the Nilaya Anthology by Asian Paints, Mumbai’s latest design hub, for a special event. Asian Paints is India’s leading paint and decor company. The collaboration showed the region what Nilufar was capable of and presented a vintage-meets-contemporary selection of furniture, lighting and decor from both the Nilufar gallery and Yashar’s Nilufar Edition collection, curated by Yashar herself.

In a similar vein, in 2024 she introduced Nilufar to Mexico City design fair Zonamaco with a takeover of the  historic home of architect Pedro Ramírez Vázquez. Pieces from Nilufar Edition were placed around the home and offered visitors a glimpse into ultra-high-end European designs. These included lighting pieces by Milan’s Analogia Project and Copenhagen’s Vibeke Fonnesberg Schmidt, as well as modular low-seating sofas, low tables and armchairs by design studio David/Nicolas, which operates across Lebanon, Italy and the U.S.  

The next pop-up event will be held in Monaco on Boulevard de Moulins in a 3,240-square-foot space where Nilufar will again present a set of vintage and collectible design pieces. This time they will stand alongside a selection of artworks curated by Tivioli, a fashion brand that manufactures artisanal, one-of-a-kind garments.

A Look Back

In addition to expanding into new markets, Yashar reflected on her role as a researcher of design. Before starting Nilufar, she had her own luxury carpet business on Via Bigli, which she founded in 1979. She later discovered the potential of design on a trip to Stockholm in the 1980s, where she encountered the work of Danish furniture designer Hans Wenger and Finnish architect Alvar Aalto. She soon began selling those pieces alongside her carpets, and it was then that she discovered a new passion.

“It was my first portal and was born by chance,” she said, noting it wasn’t the first cultural-exchange that impacted her. Yashar lived in Tehran until the age of five. At the time, Tehran was a booming culture capital of the region, before the revolution would close off the nation to the modern world. “I breathed this air tied to textiles, carpets and harmony. It was the cultural hub of the Middle East,” she reminisced. Since her arrival in Milan, she said, the city has represented a hub for innovation, creativity and transformation.

Over the last decade, the Italian capital has also experienced a boom as its international community has growth, welcoming some of the richest investors in all of Europe, she said. In a recent study by Julius Baer, Milan ranked among the top 10 most-expensive cities for the ultra-wealthy.

Scouting New Talent

Scouting new names and design pillars is still key to Nilufar’s future. Her curiosity and willingness to take risks, she explained, have been the key to her gallery’s success and resonance on a global level.

One such recent discovery was the luminous creations by designer Maximilian Marchesani, a product engineer who displayed chandeliers and wall lamps made with branches collected locally and which were then hollowed at the core to make way for thin cables and adorned with strands of his own mother’s hair. “At first I wasn’t really sure,” Yashar said. “But in the end, he put together a poetic world that is all in his heart, in his soul, with a great technical ability to deal with these pieces,” she mused.

Nilufar teamed with Argentinian digital-to-visual artist Andrés Reisinger to provide one of the highlights of Milan Design Week 2024. Yashar co-curated his large-scale experiential exhibition “12 Chairs for Meditation.”

In cathedral-worthy glory, the work rose six meters, depicting a surreal celestial sky with 12 levitating apples. A total of 24 mosaic artists at Mosaicos Venecianos de Mexico, which was founded in Cuernavaca in 1949 during the Mexican Muralist Movement, hand-cut and shaped each single piece of glass.

Risk Taking

In hindsight, she said some of her biggest bets paid off. One of her landmark purchases was the “100 chairs” from the 2009 “100 chairs in 100 days” exhibit by Gamper, a project that transformed discarded chairs into playful, thought-provoking designs, exploring functionality, style and context.

“These are just a few among many examples. Lots of surprises, risky by definition,” she continued.

With the anniversary celebration, Nilufar will also present “Nilufar Depot: The First Decade” — a 100-plus page book chronicling the Depot’s journey since its inception. Available on Tuesday, the book was conceived as both a visual and narrative archive and features previously unpublished and rare images, alongside a comprehensive overview of all exhibitions, retrospectives and installations presented over the years. The publication includes various exhibitions like Lina Bo Bardi — Giancarlo Palanti Studio d’Arte Palma 1948-1951, presented during Milan Design Week 2018 and more recent ones like Poikilos — New Forms of Iridescence, a solo exhibition by New York- and Athens-based research and design studio Objects of Common Interest presented during Milan Design Week 2023.

“I see this anniversary above all as a new beginning. The aim is to keep pushing the boundaries of the project, welcoming new visions and shaping an even more dynamic future,” she said.