When she was 19 years old, Lisa Ponti’s father, the dexterous Italian design visionary Gio Ponti, published a collection of her poems, Gio Ponti Agli Amici (“From Gio Ponti to His Friends”), and gave them out as Christmas gifts.

Interspersed with illustrations by Gio’s prominent painter and sculptor pals, including Giorgio de Chirico and Arturo Martini, the book foreshadowed the long, deep relationships with the artists that Lisa would cultivate until her death in 2019 at age 97.