For Cassina Paris Rive Gauche, designer Philippe Starck presented a sofa and chairs made from Apple Ten Lork, a leather-like material made from apple skins.
Apple Ten Lork was developed by the Italian company Frumat. It is made using the skins and other waste of apples and forms a vegan alternative to leather.
For the installation, which was on show from 17 to 30 January, Starck reinvented the Volage EX-S sofa, the Privè collection and Caprice and Passion chairs with the apple leather, in the colours white, orange and black.
“A leather sofa is beautiful and comfortable, but why stop there?” Starck says. “We pretend not to hear the question but we really need to find other solutions. Today, perhaps apples can give us the beginning of the answer. Like Eve, Newton and William Tell, we believe in the apple, in Apple Power. Let’s eat apples and hope that this Cassina sofa made from apples creates a new vegetal path to mutual respect.”
For the occasion, the entire Cassina Paris Rive Gauche showroom was decorated around three specific tales about apples. The first is the biblical origin of mankind, with Adam and Eve and the forbidden fruit. The second is the story of Newton’s theory of gravity, discovered thanks to an apple falling from a tree. The last story is that of the life of the Belgian surrealist painter Magritte’s ‘The Son of Man’ portrait, in which a green apple floats in front of his face, emphasising humans’ desire to see what’s hidden.
All items on show are available to buy as a limited edition.
Photos: Philippe Starck