Yves Salomon revives Pierre Chapo lighting and furniture using shearling offcuts

At this year's Salone del Mobile at Milan design week, fashion brand Yves Salomon showcased a furniture collection with Chapo Creation, inspired by Pierre Chapo's designs and incorporating shearling offcuts.

The collection consists of a day seat, a sculptural chair, a lampshade, an ottoman, and an armchair. Each item was upholstered with upcycled shearling scraps, which were held together using cord, removing the need for nails, glue, or screws.

"The project set out to challenge our artisans at Yves Salomon's ateliers to repurpose and upcycle materials from our fashion collections," the fashion brand's founder Yves Salomon told Dezeen.

"This approach led to the choice of a diverse range of furniture, enabling our craftsmen to showcase their skills through a variety of innovative techniques," he continued.

Salomon used intarsia, a technique normally most associated with wood, to fit the shearling pieces together to make a pattern or picture.

"Shearling serves as the material, while intarsia — similar to marquetry — is the technique used," said Salomon.

The collection, created for furniture brand Chapo Creation, includes the Lo1Bed day bed. The day bed, originally created by furniture designer Chapo for Irish writer Samuel Beckett in 1959, features clean, modern lines and can also be used as a seat.

"It offers a large surface that allows Maison Yves Salomon to fully express its artistic vision, much like painting on a canvas," said Salomon.

Also included in the collection is the S11 chair, originally created in 1966. This was assembled without glue or nails in a process resembling a puzzle, according to the studio.

Originally covered in linen or leather, Salomon replaced these materials with shearling.

"The S11 Chair embodies the collaboration through its assembly process. Chapo's contribution is a manual assembly technique that uses no screws, nails, or glue," he said.

"Meanwhile, Yves Salomon brings a unique three-layer technique to the seating: a combination of shearling intarsia, cow leather, and lamb leather intarsia, all tied together with natural cordage," Salomon explained.

Also part of the collection is the D19 Balance Arm Lamp, which has a long, geometric shape. Salomon made a special lampshade from shearling intarsia for the piece, casting a warm light that reflects on the lamp's elm base, making it glow.

"The D19 Balance Arm Lamp was selected to broaden the project's scope, extending beyond furniture to complexity," he said.

"It features a self-locking mechanism designed by Chapo and is complemented by a lampshade crafted from shearling intarsia with a lamb leather lining, a distinctive touch added by Yves Salomon."

Completed in 1974, the S31 ottoman is available in three heights and features an intarsia disk.

"Yves Salomon creatively adapted the shape of Chapo's iconic coffee table into a shearling intarsia design. It was one of the most complex pieces to develop due to the challenging angles of the seating," said Salomon.

The S10 armchair, nicknamed "Sahara," is one of the earliest collapsible furniture pieces ever created. Originally designed with a leather seat, back, and armrest, it now has a shearling cover.

Studying the original leather models of the S10, which were held together with metal and rope, led to the development of a stronger sandwich-shaped structure. This new design incorporates layers of shearling, vachette leather, and lamb leather.

"Similar to the S11 chair, the S10 Armchair is a showcase of shared expertise, combining wood assembly techniques with shearling intarsia, all bound together with natural cordage," Salomon said.

Other furniture collections recently published on Dezeen include a series of chairs informed by legs of "iconic women" designed by Pierre Yovanovitch and Christian Louboutin and a communal table for pounding and serving fufu created by Giles Tettey Nartey.

The photography is by Laora Queyras.

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