Cannetta & Spinelli "Alfiona" Sofa for Arflex, 1980

Design
1980

Manufacture
1980-1989

Location
Lonigo, IT

Cannetta & Spinelli "Alfiona" sofa for Arflex, metal, lacquered wood and patinated leather, Italy, 1980

The "Alfiona" sofa for Arflex reduces seating to two opposing volumes and a floating cushion mass suspended between them. The side elements are conceived as solid, glossy black lacquered wood blocks, deep enough to double as side tables, their top surfaces left bare and reflective. The seat and back cushions, upholstered in leather with visible channel stitching along the piping, rest on a slim structural support that reads almost as an afterthought against the weight of the lacquer, an effect the designers clearly intended.

Cannetta and Spinelli developed the Alfiona for Arflex at the start of the 1980s, at a moment when the Italian company was pushing seating away from soft, enveloping forms toward sharper, more architectural statements, a shift also visible in contemporaneous Arflex designs such as Fabrizio Ballardini's multi-positional Ribalta seating. The sofa's two lacquered volumes function as both structure and furniture in their own right, a duality that gives the piece its sculptural, almost freestanding presence in a room, while the leather cushions soften what would otherwise be a purely geometric object. The result situates Cannetta and Spinelli's design language somewhere between cabinetry and seating, a hybrid explored elsewhere in the period through modular Arflex sofas that similarly paired lacquered wood frames with loose upholstered cushions. The sofa's architectural silhouette and considered material contrast remain hallmarks of A. Cannetta and F. Spinelli's design for Arflex.

The sofa's poles can be adjusted to yield a more compact footprint, and this example comes complete with the corresponding set of smaller cushions, scaled accordingly and included with the piece.