“The finished seats gave me a satisfaction that I had never experienced before. They were so perfect that they fascinated even me, who was the author (…). What comfort! Soft cushions, not too soft and not too hard. The touch of the gray marinated leather that I expressly used without dyeing because I did not want to apply any dye. The voluminous backrest with optimal inclination that gently supported the back. The two arms, which seemed inflated with delicate curves. The combination of all these elements produced an enigmatic harmony and I could say that it was a comfortable chair come trueâ€.
“Sunk in the chair, he was enchanted caressing the rounded arms with both hands. Then, as usual, a series of fantasies came to me, one after the other, to infinity, with luminous mental colors like a rainbow. Maybe it was a hallucination?
This is how the upholsterer who is the protagonist of the story The Armchair Man, which the Japanese writer Ranpo Edogawa brought to life almost a century ago, expresses himself. A great admirer of Allan Poe, and a benchmark for detective and mystery stories in Japan, Edogawa led the fantasies of his craftsman through unsuspected twists and turns, until he was installed to live for a time in an armchair.
Today the best armchairs and armchairs bear the signature of distinguished designers and are endorsed by prestigious firms. The anonymous upholsterer, however, is often hidden behind its production. And the most sophisticated models often resort to traditional artisan techniques that give them distinction. Like the generous structure of Thum, an armchair designed by Milanese Lorenza Bozzoli, made of curved mahogany wood and maple inlays that draw a decorative bevel on the backrest.
Or the Forest armchair signed by Philppe Starck, for the Spanish company Andreu World, where the wood surrounds the padding. With plywood, it combines walnut and oak and houses the upholstery, outlining the armrests. For the joints of the structure, Starck travels back in time and recovers a type of artisan closure used in furniture from the Middle Ages, a kind of highly resistant solid ash wood buttons.
Leather enters the scene in the Syren armchair, by Oscar and Gabriele Buratti, which benefits from the century of craftsmanship of the Frag firm with this material and applied to saddlery. The metal frame supports the wide leather band that wraps and cradles the soft removable cushions.
The Bruno armchair from the London office of Ilse Crawford and Oscar Peña, with its disparate armrests, pays homage to Bruno Munari and his iconoclastic vision of design. It proposes to accommodate new gestures and languages ​​when sitting down. The lower part suggests a place where the leg can rest dangling.
New editions such as Soriana, created by Afra and Tobia Scarpa in 1969, update the voluptuous, informal yet sophisticated comfort of that decade. A daring pop version of the tufted upholstery. Galeotta also comes from that prodigious decade in design, created in 1968 by the trio Jonathan De Pas, Donato D’Urbino and Paolo Lomazzi, who in their day practiced the deconstruction of the traditional armchair and new ways of sitting at home. Transformable and dynamic, its sequence of folding cushions allows it to be converted into a chaise longue. Three blocks of irregular geometry result in different configurations, for a sitting or semi-reclining posture.
In these innovative designs, generous dimensions and voluminous padding of variable density encourage a highly comfortable seat. The name of armchair, from the Caribbean cumanagoto putaca, is already fictional. To experience what it feels like on the other side of this seat, nothing like delving into Edogawa’s surprising story, with a surprise ending.
