Last month, Espasso opened a retail store in West Hollywood, California, featuring a full range of Brazilian design master Sergio Rodrigues’ furniture layouts. Espasso founder and curator Carlos Junqueira, Rodrigues’ close friend, is delighted to be part of the renewed interest in Rodrigues’ work, including that the designer is responsible for creating a “distinctly Brazilian midcentury modern design language” that favors a relaxed and lively aesthetic. Espasso is the sole retail space devoted to showcasing and selling reissues of Rodrigues’ chairs, chests, lamps and tables.
In a video interview, Rodrigues says that his house is “filled with prototypes,” adding that he “takes chairs home to see whether they work nicely, if [his] wife enjoys them” He recalls that in the Bauhaus age, the dogs and cats could “scale on chairs and slide right off,” but playfully adds that in his house now, the pets sit comfortably.
The enormous fascination in Rodrigues’ work and its preservation is in part because of a world that loves Brazil’s famous supermodels, soccer stars and musicians, and on account of the overall fascination about Brazilian culture and contemporary design. Says Junqueira, “Even Brazilians are only looking at their particular cultural production in a more historical way.”
Espasso
Chifruda Sergio Rodrigues
The interest in creating a limited number of reissued Chifruda chairs was spurred if the first prototype showed up in a Rio de Janeiro pawn store in 2010, after which Espasso and Rodrigues agreed to come up with a 40-piece re-edition; 20 of the bits have sold.
Rodrigues, seen here, sits in his Chifruda, which translates to “cuckolded one” in Portuguese. For Rodrigues, designing spaces and furniture is something “in his blood” and the very thing which keeps him busy. “If I were not an architect, I’d be sitting,” he says. “Sleeping. Listening to other people tell stories”
Espasso
Chifruda Chair by Sergio Rodrigues – $27,050
This picture shows a rear view of this Chifruda, which highlights the “horns” of the chair’s headrest.
Rodrigues says he’s his own client: “I create what I enjoy. I shut myself off to any trend so that I could really have fun in the seat”
Marco Antunio
In this splashy urban shack, Brazilian interior architect and designer Fabio Galeazzo cries more curves into a living room full of circles and arches with his addition of a Chifruda seat. The shack’s diverse, relaxed aesthetic is the best background for your own iconic piece.
Espasso
Mole Armchair from Sergio Rodrigues
“The most famous Rodrigues furniture bit is the Mole armchair,” Junqueira says. (It’s seen here with an ottoman.) Robust, soft and exaggerated in size and look, the Mole leather armchair sparked an global design tendency of oversize chairs favoring comfort in design in 1961 — before La-Z-Boy sofas and armchairs became popular.
Espasso
Actress Kim Novak was captured reclining in this film in a trip to Rodrigues’ design company in Brazil, Oca Industries.
Espasso
Oscar Armchair by Sergio Rodrigues
Seen here’s the Oscar armchair, named after city planner and architect Oscar Niemeyer, whose buildings brought modernism to Brazil.
Espasso
Mocho Stool from Sergio Rodrigues
This curvy midcentury stool sports a small hole, a touch of a lot of Rodrigues’ furniture layouts. “I very much like holes,” says Rodrigues, that has integrated holes in additional furniture pieces, like the Katita, Sonia, Chifruda and Xibô. The hole in this blossom stool makes for easy carrying.
More:
Modern Icons: Alvar Aalto’s Warm, Modern Furnishings
Modern Icons: Alexander Girard’s Splashy Textiles
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