OBJECT 13

            Capelli Stool, very cool!

A stool is simply an object to sit on.  Bereft of back and sides, the stool is often seen as the poor country cousin of the chair, the primitive missing link between the stump and the throne or merely a minor iteration in the development of the modern sitting machine.  Simplicity, however, can sometimes constitute the greater part of elegance; less can indeed be more.  The object of this article possesses these qualities.  Two pieces of wood leaning against each other resulting in a functional object.  Simple. Lovely.

    Place your palms together and interlock your fingers.  Now, push down, lift your elbows and feel how stable the arrangement has become.  The fingers are, in effect, cantilevered against each other.  This, according to Carol Catalano, was the design inspiration for her CAPELLI Stool.  

 

            I’ll have to admit that when I first laid eyes on this stool, my first thought was that it was a newer version of Sori Yanagi’s 1954 BUTTERFLY Stool, one of my favorite objects (See OBJECT 5 on this blog.).  Look at the two side by side and I’m sure you’ll agree with me that the similarities are striking.    Both have a japanesque accent.  The resemblance, according to Catalano, is a purely a coincidence. I’m happy to take her word for it.

 

            I spoke with the designer who explained to me that CAPELLI arose as a “fun” project.  She and her team at Catalano Design set out to improve the minimalist but functional object that is the stool.  Within a matter of months, the interlocking-fingers concept had grown into a full-size prototype. 

 

            The use of molded plywood as the only material is a fitting homage to Charles and Ray Eames.  However, it is the engineering of the stool that sets it apart from all other similar objects.  The surfaces at the base of the interlocked elements serve as stops to give stability to the cantilever arrangement and no tools or fasteners are used.  Two identical pieces of plywood lock together to form a rock-solid sitting platform.  Impressive!

 

            Lest I spoil this review with an overdose of praise, I must return if just for a moment to the comparison with Yanagi’s BUTTERFLY stool.  In my humble opinion CAPELLI does not attain the aesthetic heights that the BUTTERFLY stool does.  Yanagi incorporated complex curves in his stool that have successfully elevated it to a work of art.  These complex curves are lacking in Catalano’s piece.  I’ll say this however:  What CAPELLI lacks in aesthetics it makes up for with its technical tour de force. 

 

            The CAPELLI stool was honored with a silver prize at the International Furniture Design Competition in Asahikawa, Japan in 2001.  It was also awarded silver in the 2002 Industrial Design Excellence Awards (IDEA), an international competition co-sponsored by BusinessWeek magazine and the Industrial Designers Society of America.  The stool is currently produced by Herman Miller, a company with a storied history of working with molded plywood.

 

            Oh, one last thing.  I asked Carol Catalano about the name.  Capelli in Italian is “hair” and Catalano explained to me that one of the team members pointed out the resemblance between the interlocking elements and a hair part, thus capelli. As a lark, I managed to find a cartoon that emphasizes the similarity and as luck would have it, includes the added bonus of incorporating a rare example of architectural humor.

 

Joseph Froncioni