Giancarlo Piretti Alky Chair for Artifort

The Alky chair is one of those designs that looks impossible until you sit in it. A single, continuous form where base and seat flow as one unified piece, it challenges every assumption about what a chair should be, and then rewards you with remarkable comfort.

Designed by Giancarlo Piretti in 1969, the Alky is essentially a modernised slipper chair stripped to its conceptual essence. A metal frame provides the skeleton, foam sculpts the body, and the upholstery, in this case a beautifully soft brown nubuck leather, provides the skin. The result is a chair that appears to have been carved from a single block rather than assembled from parts.

This example has been professionally reupholstered in nubuck leather that develops character with use, growing softer and more lustrous over time. The brown tone is warm without being heavy, complementing both contemporary and mid-century interiors with equal ease.

Piretti, born in Bologna in 1940, originally created the Alky for Italian manufacturer Castelli before it was taken up by Dutch company Artifort. His background in industrial design is evident in the chair's economy of means: every element serves both structural and aesthetic purposes, nothing is decorative for its own sake.

In a reading corner or beside a fireplace, the Alky makes a quiet but unmistakable statement. It is the kind of chair that designers recognise across a room, a piece that signals an understanding of furniture as something more than function.