Fun Furniture Fact #19: Tobia Scarpa and the Coronado Armchair
From their first collaborations as husband and wife in the middle 1950s until the present day, no other designers have spoken as completely and as articulately in single furniture offerings. Each piece, whether their Biagio table lamp for Flos, their Bastiano seating range for Knoll or their Centenary vases for L’eclaireur, simultaneously addresses history, industrial production, form, function, materials and contemporary cultures. – Matthew Sullivan of Core77
Tobia Scarpa, son of the influential Italian architect Carlo Scarpa, graduated from the Instituto Universitario di Architettura in Venice in the late 1950s, where he met his wife, Afra Blanchin. Together they collaborated on design projects and built a career working for nearly every major international design company including Flos, Cassina, Knoll and B&B.
Their design work ranged from full scale architectural projects such as factories, shops and offices created for Benetton to everyday household items including art, glass, clothing and furniture.
Tobia and Afra were innovators of their time because of their consciousness to produce functional pieces with a poetic, amalgamative and polished design. While they used modern materials and procedures to create their products, their designs were more classical than the ones being produced by their peers during that time. This influenced the way people furnished their homes as residents wanted furniture that stood in perfect harmony with modern and traditional interiors alike.
Their design work ranged from full scale architectural projects such as factories, shops and offices created for Benetton to everyday household items including art, glass, clothing and furniture.
Tobia and Afra were innovators of their time because of their consciousness to produce functional pieces with a poetic, amalgamative and polished design. While they used modern materials and procedures to create their products, their designs were more classical than the ones being produced by their peers during that time. This influenced the way people furnished their homes as residents wanted furniture that stood in perfect harmony with modern and traditional interiors alike.
In 1966 Scarpa designed the “Coronado” series of armchairs for B&B Italia which became one of the best selling pieces of its time and to this day is considered one of the couple’s most notable works. The Coronado chair was one of the first padded pieces of furniture to use the new cold-molded foaming process in which a metal structure could be sunk within the polyurethane padding. It offers great comfort thanks to a spring system made of steel music wire strips incorporated into the backrest. With its fine traditional design, Coronado is a “classic” armchair that embodies the very nature of relaxation.
From the couple’s first collaborations as husband and wife in the mid-1950s to the present day, their pieces have incorporated new technologies, while still maintaining a sense of history, form and function. Their work can be found in museums across the United States and Europe, including collections in MoMA and the Lourve Museum.
To own your very own piece of history in fine design, check out Furnish Green’s very own Tobia Scarpa Coronado Chair!