Sergio Rodrigues, Mole Armchair with ottoman , 1957

Sergio Rodrigues signature piece designed in 1957, the "Mole" Armchair – which means "soft" in Portuguese – is composed of a solid rounded Rosewood frame, adjustable leather support straps, and floppy, oversized luxurious leather cushions. Although it was not well received in the beginning, Mole would soon become an icon, perhaps the most well-known piece of Brazilian design. Its forms allow the user to shape the body anatomically when sitting in comfort. These characteristics do not define this piece itself but a key project of national design.

Robust and extremely comfortable, the Mole sparked an international design trend that favored comfort, and new attention to scale, over the rigid and antiseptic concurrent design trends. In 1961 the Mole Armchair was prized at the IV Furniture Bienal in Italy. Today, Mole is part of the collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.

"There was a Brazilianness accent. It was a piece that easily revealed where it had been made. It could only have come from a place where there was a lot of wood and leather. And there was a certain informality in the design." Sergio Rodrigues to the Folha de São Paulo newspaper, February 2006.

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Sergio Rodrigues

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