Series of four 'klismoi' chairs by Luca Scacchetti.

Series of four klismoi chairs by Luca Scacchetti.
Wood, leather.
Italy.
ca. 1990.
h. 33,6 in. ; w. 22,44 in. ; d. 24,6 in.

This series of four chairs, designed by the Italian architect and designer Luca Scacchetti, is a contemporary interpretation of the ancient klismos, deemed by Gisela Richter the ‘most characteristically Greek piece of furniture’, in which ‘the Greek sense of harmony and grace [...] finds its best expression’, and which principal features are ‘a curved back and plain, curved legs’ and, as rule, without decoration, ‘its beauty lying solely in the proportion and line’.

The original klismos, however, is known to us only through indirect representations—Hellenistic steles, Roman sculptures, and, most notably, Greek red-figure ceramics. In this reinterpretation, Scacchetti transcends the mere form of the furniture by adopting a rare palette of black and orange, thus evoking the imaginary of ancient Greece beyond the object’s physical shape alone. It is the idea or memory, the mental image of the klismos, that Scacchetti seems to have sought, rather than an archaeological reconstruction akin to those envisioned by Louis-François Bettenfeld in the final years of the nineteenth century or by Terence Harold Robsjohn-Gibbings in the second third of the twentieth. This approach is nonetheless imbued with a distinctly modern touch through the introduction of brass rear legs, a stylistic detail that betrays the likely influence of Guglielmo Ulrich, a major figure in twentieth-century Italian design, to whom Scacchetti dedicated a monograph in 2009 and of whom he is, in certain respects, an heir.

The talent of Luca Scacchetti, an Italian architect and designer born in 1952, spanned the fields of urban planning, civil engineering, interior architecture, and industrial design.

Among his most remarkable contributions are the rehabilitation of Bologna’s Guglielmo Marconi Airport and that of Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci Airport. He also taught at the Polytechnic University of Architecture in Milan and the Brera Academy and directed the architecture department at the European Institute of Design. Five monographs have been devoted to his work.