Gaetano Pesce | Design Miami. Paris 2024

Gaetano Pesce’s La Famiglia was born in the early months of 2024. He intended for the four chairs in this series to accommodate people of all ages, and with this in mind invented - quite literally - a family of related forms: La Mamma (the Mother), La Cugina (the Cousin), Il Bambino (the Child), and La Piccola (the Little One).

The La Famiglia chairs are made in stiffened industrial felt, a material innovation that Pesce pioneered in his Feltri Chair for Cassina, in 1987. The original inspiration was a chance encounter that Pesce had on Cotton Drive, in Hong Kong. It was a rainy night, and he chanced on a piece of felt lying on the pavement. Struck by how much water the felt had absorbed, it occurred to him that felt could also soak up clear resin, and then become rigid, as the resin catalyzed. He returned to this idea often in the years since, using the technique to make cabinets, vases, and furniture, constantly experimenting (as was so typical of him) with shape, color, and scale.

A few weeks before Pesce’s passing in April 2024, La Famiglia was prototyped in his studio in Brooklyn, New York. Though he considered making them in solid resin, he concluded that the felt was preferable, as he enjoyed the transformation of the flat, soft textile - cut out like a child’s drawings - into functional seating. The initial prototypes were exhibited in Pesce’s final exhibition Nice to See You, held in April during Salone Del Mobile in Milan. This final realization of the chairs, carried out posthumously in Italy by Pesce’s studio team, marks the completion of the great designer’s last project in furniture.

The work will be on view for the first time in Salon 94 Design’s booth at the 2nd edition of Design Miami. Paris 2024.

For more information on the work of Gaetano Pesce please contact,

Trang Tran, Director.