CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 1/4/2022

In Silvana's Joe Colombo catalogue raisonné, a future-facing "total design" ethos

Designed in 1963, in continuous production since 1965, and known to many for its starring role in the 1977 James Bond film, The Spy Who Loved Me, Joe Colombo's Elda armchair is one of Italy's most iconic, fundamentally futuristic pieces of twentieth-century furniture. Profiled recently in Architectural Digest, the chair's design was inspired by a visit to a shipyard where Colombo saw fiberglass hulls for small boats being molded into rounded shapes by hand. Featured photograph is reproduced from Joe Colombo: Designer, Silvana's action-packed catalogue raisonné, where Colombo's ideas about comfort, functionality, style and domestic design eerily predict our exact moment: "People will be able to study and work at home," he said months before his death in 1971, "distances will no longer matter, the megacity will lose its meaning."