Prickly Pair Chairs

July 21, 2010 - By Alex Dent - Category: Design & Furniture

It’s that time of summer when the optimism of spring is evaporating as quickly as the turgidity of the potted plants on my front porch. It’s the heat that kills them. In the spring, it seemed like a good idea to plant dozens of delicate, thirsty flowers; but in the summer the ghosts of dead plants are reminding me that I should have planted cacti… or maybe just rocks.

New to me are the Prickly Pair Chairs by Valentina Gelz Wohlers. Introduced last year during Milan Design Week, the chairs cleverly bend a very French, oval-backed chair with the pads of a prickly pear cactus.  There are even little spiny things in the tufts of the upholstery. The chair made me laugh the first time I saw it, and I’ve been thinking about how to downplay the absurdity of the chair in an interior ever since.  I haven’t come up with anything.

But I still like the chair, and I need somethings other than dead plants on my front porch. Is there a waterproof version? Well, honestly, I’m not sure that water is a realistic threat… just ask the dead plants.

Alex