Italian designer chairs

Here’s a snapshot of some of the chairs we have viewed over the last couple of weeks.

It is interesting that designers are always asked to design new chairs.

You might be forgiven for thinking that chairs are things that have been fundamentally sorted in the design world.  We don’t mean that they are all perfectly shaped or wonderfully comfortable.  It’s more that there have been plenty of wonderfully designed and beautifully comfortable chairs already made over the years.

And because of the needs of the human body in a chair, it’s pretty hard to beat the concept of four vertical legs (quattro gambe, in Italian), one seat (un posto), and one back (uno indietro). And let’s not forget that they need the ability to be moved around alot! (muoversi)

But people like to refresh their styles, even if refreshment is really another form of recycle.

What goes around comes around, as they say.

So here’s a random selection of chairs from us.

This is a very elegant chair and quite unusual.  A key feature is the connection design for the leather, to ensure it remains taut over time even when the leather stretches.  Another success from Bartoli Design. (By the way Anna Bartoli is a really lovely person and it’s been great to meet her here.)

Back to the Villa Balbionelli where the eclectic collection of a previous explorer owner includes furniture from outside Italy.  (I mean explorer literally, he even went to Everest!)  This chair is quite a feature, and the upholstered leather looks warm and inviting, but I’m not too sure about the shape.  This chair was for viewing only so we couldn’t test its comfort.

These stools from the concept store Agape were pretty cool.  True, they aren’t chairs but I like their shape so I’ve included them.

The classic “LC2” chair made by Cassina, and designed not just by Le Corbusier but also Pierre Jeanneret and Charlotte Perriand.

The Cassina website says: “Designed in 1928 and exhibited at the Salon d’Automne in Paris in 1929, it is the archetypal armchair in the new and modern conception of furnishings understood as “domestic equipment”, re-issued by Cassina and produced exclusively since 1965. The separation of the metal frame and the cushions expresses a rationalist approach to industrial production.”

I have a couple of the LC range sofas at our PodMarket studio in Melbourne.  They are fantastic for waiting areas and even easy to lie on.  The cushioning is much softer than you might think yet the sturdy tube framing makes the chair very sound.

Here we are in a Molteni showroom testing out chairs.

Gio Ponti made these chairs incredibly comfortable despite how little actual seating area there is!

Really good.  Thanks.  I’ll take four.