The free-form construction and orange hue of the Corallo Armchair mimic the natural structure and color of coral, the material that inspired it. Short fragments of steel wire are hand-bent and welded each onto the next, much like the budding and branching process by which coral grows underwater. A coat of epoxy paint protects the steel and seduces the eye with dazzling color. The result is a highly expressive sculptural seat perfectly suited for indoor or outdoor use.
Wire is hardly a new material in furniture design. Charles Eames and Harry Bertoia recognized the mass-manufacturing potential of the material in their classic chairs of the early 1950s, and their rational form-follows-function approach to structural applications of steel wire continues to this day in the designs of Enzo Mari and Alfredo Haeberli. The Corallo Armchair distinguishes itself from this tradition and allies itself with a very contemporary design concern: emotional and psychological appeal. The Campana brothers avoid rectilinear, geometric construction suited for mass production in favor of a liberated, vital tangle of sensuous lines that make a virtue of the charming imperfections created by the maker's hand. The evocation of coral lends the chair an appearance of having blossomed organically through its own DNA-encoded growth patterns, completely free of the strictures of mass production. Indeed, no two Corallo chairs are alike.
Publication excerpt from The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Highlights since 1980, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2007 , p. 268.
