detailed weaving pattern of the seat and backrest and to find the right
proportions, also in relation with the chair’s frame. “It was immediately
clear that if we really wanted to learn something, we could not work with
scale models. From the beginning, the only way was a 1:1 scale, with the
actual material and seat shell.” This is unusual and complicated under
normal circumstances, but it entirely conforms to the “Let’s go whole
hog” principle, which is also typical for ClassiCon itself. The specialist,
who grew up in a town with 250 years of weaving tradition, fearlessly
tackled the project down to the smallest details: a leather trim at the neck
of the seat shell, for example, occupied him for several days (“Should it
be glued or stitched?”); he made phone calls to experts in gluing (“They
can really be super-cumbersome!”), tinkered on the perfect bottom view
together with the designer (“How can you invisibly staple onto wood?”),
and on textile linings that gave the leather straps stability. “You’re dealing
with people who want to develop something,” he says about ClassiCon,
and the reverse applies, as well.
For the tabletop of the “Pegasus” desk, a leather manufactory
in northern Italy found the solution: thin metal rods are hidden in the
saddle leather of the flexible tabletop, providing both flexibility and
stability, “as is the case with a corset”, as the managing director explains.
Magnets fix it to the desk and give it form: “We receive the drawing and
develop an idea from it.” Of course, this requires profound knowledge
of the nature and quality of the material, its thickness, flexibility and
surface. The company is now in its second generation of ownership,
and “there has been quite a bit of knowledge amassed regarding what is
possible and what is not.”
This kind of furniture requires a network of specialists,
manufacturers that dare to venture into uncharted territory armed with
traditional knowledge and come up with solutions beyond the standards
of serial machine production. Usually, these are small to medium sized
handicraft businesses, owner-managed like ClassiCon, with both short
decision-making paths and a comparably large degree of willingness
to think outside the box. Especially because the orders are unusual and
highly demanding for the manufacturers, the search for such businesses
can essentially be considered part of the design process. Most of them
are based in Germany, and many are even located in the Munich region,
where excellent and highly specialised handicraft people have always
lived. “The expertise is available right outside our doorstep,” says Oliver
Holy. “Of course, we use and promote it.”
Designer Sebastian Herkner believes that “without the handi-
craft people, we may as well pack up and leave”, and his colleague Tilla
Goldberg is certain that “the businesses with absolute passion and
ambition for their own craft are what enable collector’s items such as
the ClassiCon furniture”. The Stuttgart based designer, a partner of
Ippolito Fleitz Group, designed the “Pegasus” desk for ClassiCon. It has
a tabletop made of saddle leather which is rolled up instead of folded
up. She also created the “Aërias” chair – and reinterpreted the classic
“Vienna canework” as an XL pattern and in leather (instead of cane).
Both are designs whose realisation is not obvious; it first had to be found
through trial-and-error.
“Manual re-thinking” is what the Westphalian basket weaver
with whom she developed “Aërias” calls it. “The leather did not scare me
off,” he says. The challenge was to enlarge the well-known, small and
