Fachiro Seat

Marzio Cecchi designed Fachiro in 1975. The name is Italian for fakir, and the seat looks the part: a round form covered all over in soft spikes, closer to a sea creature than to an armchair. It followed a series of designs on the theme of living close to nature that Cecchi had pursued since 1958.

For the first Fachiro, Cecchi turned to a Florentine tailor who specialised in leather, in the Tuscan tradition. The present edition is upholstered with faux leather and limited to 99 pieces. The spikes are not what they seem: once you sit down, the seat gives softly, like a leather pouf. At 150 cm across and 110 cm high it is a large object, and because it is made by hand, each piece differs slightly.

Cecchi was the son of the couturier Giulia Carla Cecchi, whose sense of form ran through much of his work. Fachiro shares the play with perception found across Gufram's collection, as in the lip sofa Bocca.