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Made in Italy
Helicoidal staircase in white statuario marble climbing through the darkness of a Mayfair townhouse beneath a single shaft of light, a Michelessi design vision

Project vision

From Italy
to London

A Mayfair townhouse, imagined stone by stone in our Aprilia workshop.

The London vision

A townhouse
in Mayfair

In the heart of Mayfair, behind a Georgian facade that gives nothing away, the Michelessi vision imagines a townhouse where darkness becomes the stage and matter the sole protagonist. The project draws a helicoidal staircase in white statuario marble, rising through four storeys like a ribbon of light; dark walnut panelling and carved marble fireplaces keep watch over the reception rooms; the master bathroom is conceived as a monolith of Roman travertine, warm and silent.

Every element is born in our Aprilia workshop, where since 1976 the hands of our craftsmen have turned the block into architecture: marbles chosen by eye, cut and tuned vein by vein like the instruments of a single orchestra.

One accent alone runs through the house — gold, laid with restraint, wherever the light must come to rest. This is the London vision we present to you.

The helicoidal staircase in white statuario marble seen from below, monolithic treads in the dark and a brass handrail lit by the skylight, a Michelessi design vision

The helicoidal staircase

The white
ribbon

Four storeys of half-light, and at their centre a ribbon that climbs. The helicoidal staircase is carved in white statuario marble: monolithic treads spiralling into the void with no central column, held by the quiet wisdom of geometry alone. From the skylight above, a single beam descends the spiral and kindles the marble’s vein, while the burnished brass handrail — the only gold permitted — runs like a thread of amber through the dark. In our Aprilia workshop each tread is shaped on a template, dry-assembled and numbered before the journey: so the spiral reaches Mayfair already perfect, like a single stroke of the chisel.

Drawing room with floor-to-ceiling smoked-walnut panelling and a carved white statuario marble fireplace with its flame alight, a Michelessi design vision

The drawing room

Two voices:
wood and marble

The smoked-walnut panelling rises to the ceiling and drinks in the light, like the wings of a theatre. At the centre of the stage, the fireplace: a surround carved in statuario marble, its flame breathing and casting long shadows across the panels. Above the mantel, a simple line of gold frames the darkness — the one accent that suffices. The project tunes wood and marble like two voices: the first dark and velvet, the second white and absolute. In Aprilia the surrounds are carved by hand, leaf by leaf, with the same irons our workshop has used since 1976. Yours will be only the gesture of lighting the fire.

Library with full-height bookshelves, a ladder on a brass rail, a black Marquinia marble fireplace and a leather armchair beneath the lamp, a Michelessi design vision

The library

Where the house
lowers its voice

There is a room where the house lowers its voice. The library is lined with full-height panelling, a ladder gliding on a brass rail, and a second, more intimate fireplace in black Marquinia marble: its white vein crossing the darkness like lightning held still. A single armchair stands in the lamp’s beam of light; all the rest is shadow and the leather of books. The writing desk is a single slab worked in Aprilia, where the black is polished until it mirrors the flame. It is the quietest room of the vision: the luxury of reading beside the fire.

Master bathroom entirely clad in Roman travertine with basins hollowed from the solid block, a monolithic bath and grazing light on the stone, a Michelessi design vision

The master bathroom

The travertine
monolith

Roman travertine holds the temperature of skin. In the master bathroom the stone clothes everything — walls, floor, basins hollowed from the solid block — and the bath is a single monolith, emptied slowly the way one digs a spring. Light arrives at a grazing angle, from a hidden blade, and reveals the stone’s wave-like motion: mineral waves still after millennia. Brushed-gold taps are the only gleam permitted to the steam. In Aprilia the slabs are wax-filled and matched in continuous vein, so that your eye never finds a border. It is the room of water and silence: morning begins here, before London does.

The next project

From Aprilia,
to your home

The London vision was born in our workshop, and it can be born again, bespoke, for you. Write to us: together we will draw the stone of your home, in Mayfair or wherever you imagine it.

Contact us