Breaking the Mold

Mark McMenamin -- Interior Design, 9/1/2009 12:00:00 AM

 
At 38 inches wide, the white version flaunts a gloss finish, while the black version is matte.

Their worlds have overlapped for decades, but designer Vladimir Kagan and Ralph Pucci International never actually collaborated. Until now. "Kagan and I were in L.A. when he showed me chair sketches from the '50's," Ralph Pucci says. "I thought it was a perfect idea to use our mannequin workshop to produce one." Within a week, Kagan made a miniature clay mock-up. Pucci then had a full-scale clay model sculpted to form the plaster mold, which was ultimately cast in fiberglass. "Working in a pliable material was a totally liberating experience after making wooden substrata and fleshing them out in soft upholstery," Kagan says.


Ralph Pucci International sculptor Michael Evert translated Kagan's maquette into a full-scale clay model.The mold and model were separated.

The finished Fiberglass chair already graced the windows of New York's Saks Fifth Avenue to promote Pucci's 192-page career retrospective, Show, but officially bows in October uptown at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. The chair will then be offered in a limited edition of approximately 100. 212-633-0452; ralphpucci.net. circle 423

 
Sanding the interior of the plaster mold prepared it for fiberglass to be hand-laminated inside.The fiberglass chair received a spray coat of polyurethane.