Sunday 29 January 2012

A weekend with Gio Ponti

Well not quite...but a weekend with chairs designed by Gio Ponti way back in 1957 that are still in production today, see the website here.

These chairs are known as the "superleggera" or "super light" design - and super light is no exaggeration believe me! They are truly amazing, you can lift them with one finger, the ash frame is so slender.... they're a kind of delicate but strong ballerina of the chair world.

My job as ever is to replace the seats, not an easy task, but I thought my fellow chair seat weavers out there might appreciate a photo "anatomy" of the process needed to replace these awkward little blighters! It made me smile when I read on the Cassina web page that the seats are "india cane", well I don't know about India but they're definitely cane! So firstly here's the seat before work started.


 Notice the "knotted" edge around the frame and the rush style covering of the corners, so more investigation needed....


Wow that's neatly done, so where are all of the cane ends?


Ha, neatly tucked into the reed cane liner and then overwrapped by the next cane along. So what about those rush type corners?



Oooh, clever! So having taken it all apart guess what I was doing for the rest of the weekend? Well, it makes a change from rushing chapel chairs!

2 comments:

Leif Bech said...

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.130124253762055.27288.118002578307556&type=3

ma rcthe dogfacedboy said...

Hi there. I might have some questions for you; I'm reproducing this chair in furniture school, and I'll be getting my first caning experience with this chair.