Lady Armchair

The Lady armchair by Cassina is a symbol of an era, with its comfortable and vaguely organic shapes. Emblem of ‘50s, it is back very current now that the elegant and refined aspect, that characterised the furnishings of that period, come back in fashion. But if today it lives above all of its timeless charm of nostalgy, when the Lady armchair went into the production it was considered as a real prodigy of technology.

It was created in 1951 by Marco Zanuso for Arflex, a company founded a few years earlier by Pirelli to explore applications in furniture for a newly discovered material: foam. Zanuso disassembled the different pieces that make up a traditional armchair, dividing the seat, back and armrests and allowing the use of industrial production processes inspired by the assembly line of the automotive industry.

In the padding, it replaced the traditional springs with a new Pirelli patent, the Nastrocord, made up of ribbons in fabric covered by foam, embedded in a differentiated density polyurethane structure. Seat and back padded in this way guaranteed a seating comfort never experienced before; they were joined by two specular wooden armrests covered in fabric and four short oblique metal legs.

The Lady armchair was awarded the Gold Medal at the IX Triennale of 1951 and remained for many decades one of the core products of the Arflex catalog, until in 2016 Cassina was awarded the exclusive production rights by placing it in its “I Maestri” collection , famous for the philological precision with which it reconstructs period furnishings. The Lady armchair by Cassina can be covered in leather or fabric and it is also available with a selection of special fabrics designed by the designer Raf Simons.