Designer of upholstered furniture in an interview with the magazine SALON

Passing the gallery

Interview prepared: Oksana Kashenko

Magazine: N4 (82) 2004

In January, at the Cologne exhibition, MOLINARI showed its new collection of upholstered furniture. She created it entirely Ten van Zanten. The man is legendary, with an incredible commercial flair and great taste. It is even difficult to call him a designer. When you communicate with him, it seems Ten van Zanten could have been a secret art director, a “gray cardinal,” at least in Armani, even in the US president In his youth, he worked for the company MARCO POLO. Then a few years for ROCHE BOBOIS. Then - on IKEA and NIERI. About himself designer Ten van Zanten he says in the plural, as if not highlighting himself at all: "We are not artists, but masters - no more, no less." With the same directness and expression Ten van Zanten told SALON magazine about upholstered furniture everything he thinks - There is no particular designer who invented the sofa. The shape of the sofa created the human body. And this is a very simple form. The sofa always remains a sofa. But we, the designers, to show that we were the best and different from others, had to do a lot of stupid, crazy things. Just to declare yourself. But when you gain experience, become older, you return to the roots of things. And you understand: the point is that furniture is 80-90 percent such nonsense that you just sit on, and only 10 or 20 percent it consists of design, style and taste. We forgot what a sofa really is. A sofa is a thing that should be practical first of all. Because the design and shape of a thing changes, its essence does not change. If we say that we must return to the essence of the sofa, the sofa is a comfortable, ergonomic and at the same time reasonable item for comfortable sitting. Or reclining. The hardest thing to do is a simple thing in which the spirit of the times would nevertheless be embodied. Because we don’t have so many “melodies and notes”: there are sizes, materials and some separate details. The result is a sum of good details. And when one detail is bad, then the whole thing ceases to be beautiful. Sofa - like a woman. Imagine the most beautiful of all women, fantastic in everything, mentally undress her, put it on the table and change just one detail - believe me, a woman will lose all her beauty, become ugly. The same happens with the sofa. And to create a luxury product at a certain price level, you need to be able to make it so beautiful that you adore it. When you buy an expensive sofa, you must love this sofa. When you buy just a fashionable thing, you spend a lot of money, but after a year or two you say to yourself: "It has no value for me, I change it." The sofa should not be a sculpture in the interior. He is part of the interior, but he should not be distracted by the attention, because you already have real sculptures, paintings and anything. A sofa should be a "point of silence" in the house, and it should not be expressive. It would be nice if the sofa was not visible at all, such an “invisible” sofa. This is the best variant. And I really think so.