Armchair by Jose' Zanine Caldas

Rare armchair designed by Jose' Zanine Caldas for Mòveis Artísticos in the mid 50s
This armchair has been restored and still has a trace of the original lable on the structure

Part of the History of Furniture in Brazil course, it consisted of a lecture by Alexandre Penedo on the experience of Móveis Artísticos Z. Móveis Artísticos Z Founded in December 1948 by Sebastião Pontes, José Zanine Caldas and Paulo Mello, in the city of São José dos Campos, Móveis Artísticos Z initially produced a collection of furniture using only the plywood cutting technique. With the later entry of Hellmuth Schicker, the company diversified its production line with the use of other raw materials and industrial processes. Throughout its 13 years of existence, having burned down in 1961, the company produced dozens of different types of furniture, always aiming to serve the middle class public that was consolidated in the period. The furniture achieved great success mainly due to the lightness of the pieces, organic shapes and the use of colorful materials, all combined with a very affordable cost-benefit ratio.

A self-taught artist, designer and architect, Jose Zanine Caldas (1919-2001) was born on the southern coast of Bahia in Brazil. At age twenty, he opened an architectural scale model workshop in Rio de Janeiro where he worked with modernist pioneers such as Lucio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer.

In 1948, he and two business partners started the company Mo?veis Artisticos Z. Their elegantly simple, organically-shaped pieces in plywood were produced at a price point that made them accessible to the emerging market of collectors with an eye toward a modern style.

In the early 1950s, Zanine left the company and returned to his home state of Bahia. Heavily inspired by the local craftsmen there who carved boats and furniture from felled trees, Zanine began experimenting with chiseling and carving large, sculptural works, which became the focus of his later career. He also set himself apart with his pavilion-type architectural constructions in richly-colored hewn logs. Zanine was a devoted steward of the forest and proponent of environmental protection. He wrote extensively about his connection to the forest and tried, whenever possible, to either use already felled trees or to plant a tree for each one he used.

Zanine’s work has been exhibited in the Musée des Arts Decoratifs in Paris and throughout his native Brazil. In 2015, it was included in Moderno: Design for Living in Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela 1940-1978, a traveling exhibition organized by the Americas Society