Edra

Edra was founded in 1987 in Perignano, Tuscany, by Valerio and Monica Mazzei. The name is a contraction of “exedra”, the recess in Greek and Roman houses that opened on one side and was fitted with seats. The Mazzei family had been making furniture since 1949; Edra came out of a wish to do something else with it.

Everything is assembled by hand in the Perignano factory, but the research behind it belongs to a laboratory. Gellyfoam was developed in-house and borrows from biomedical materials. The patented Smart Cushion takes a clutch mechanism from aeronautics, letting a backrest swing through 180 degrees. At the opposite extreme, the Campana brothers' Favela armchair is nailed together slat by slat from pine, with no internal frame at all.

Edra calls its collaborators “authors” rather than designers, and refuses a single house style. Francesco Binfare has worked here for more than thirty years (Flap, Standard, Pack, On the Rocks, Grande Soffice). Masanori Umeda designed the flower-shaped Getsuen and Rose Chair in 1990, Fernando and Humberto Campana the woven rope Vermelha in 1998, and Jacopo Foggini has worked in extruded polycarbonate for the company since 2009.

There is a practical consequence to that stance: an Edra catalogue does not read as one coherent collection. Each piece argues its own case, and some sit together better than others. Artopia carries a selection in Geneva, and it is probably the one house in the showroom you should sit in rather than look at.