La Famiglia is Gaetano Pesce's last-ever furniture collection

A collection of stiffened felt chairs designed by Italian designer Gaetano Pesce prior to his death earlier this year was presented by New York gallery Salon 94 Design at Design Miami's Paris edition.

The collection, titled La Famiglia, was initiated in the early months of 2024 by Pesce, who passed away aged 84 before completing the project.

The designer created a family of four chairs intended to accommodate people of all ages, which he named La Mamma (the Mother), La Cugina (the Cousin), Il Bambino (the Child) and La Piccola (the Little One).

The chairs are made from stiffened industrial felt, using a technique that Pesce pioneered in 1987 with his Feltri chair for Cassina and subsequently applied to numerous products including cabinets, vases and furniture.

The process involves soaking the fabric in clear resin before shaping it and allowing the resin to set so that the felt forms become rigid and self-supporting.

Pesce initially considered producing the chairs from solid resin but instead chose felt because, according to a statement from the gallery, "he enjoyed the transformation of the flat, soft textile – cut out like a child's drawings – into functional seating."

Each chair features a curved backrest decorated with a cutout face that lends the pieces their distinctive, playful personalities. The hardened felt is also used to form the seats and side panels, which are folded over to create feet and armrests.

Prototypes developed by the designer at his studio in Brooklyn, New York, were presented at an exhibition titled Nice to See You during Milan Design Week.

The final versions of the chairs were produced posthumously in Italy by Pesce's studio team and were exhibited at Salon 94 Design's booth at Design Miami.Paris, held at the lavish 18th-century mansion L'hôtel de Maisons.

Alongside the La Famiglia collection, the gallery showed other pieces developed by Pesce including a chandelier comprising 60 multicoloured resin arms with LED light fittings attached.

The show also featured vases in felt and resin, and a table made from resin-soaked fabric covered with drawings of flowers.

Pesce was a pioneer of the Radical Design movement in the 1960s, when he developed experimental products that stood in stark contrast to the rational modernism that had defined the previous decades.

His iconic creations included the Up5 chair from 1969 – a vacuum-packed chair and ottoman designed to resemble a female body attached to a ball and chain.

After moving to New York in 1983, Pesce began to move away from mass production and focused on creating "standardised series" in everyday materials like resin.

Some of the projects he completed in the final years of his life include a colourful resin catwalk and seating for fashion brand Bottega Veneta and a pair of handbags for the same company that resemble bucolic landscapes.

Following the news of Pesce's passing in April, tributes poured in from members of the design community, including from curator Glenn Adamson who called him "the most reliably provocative of the Italian radical designers".

The photography is courtesy of Design Miami.Paris.

Design Miami.Paris took place from 15-20 October in Paris, France. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.

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