“Chainmail Chair” by Panorammma Atelier – A crafted intersection of pain, pleasure, and primal instinct
Panorammma is a furniture design atelier based in Mexico City that seeks to redefine our relation to functional objects through experimentations with materials and forms. Functionality becomes a premise for visual narratives and a medium for conceiving new possibilities of living immersed in an aesthetic proposal.
Founded in 2020 amidst the pandemic, artist and designer Maika Palazuelos explores this human-object relationship through an experimental design practice and future-thinking, industrial aesthetic. Her first collection – consisting of lighting, seating, and tables – blurs the line between art and design, function and sculpture.
The “Chainmail Chair” is a new take on William Katavolos 1952’s “T-Chair”. Its seat is made up of hand-linked metal rings coming together to form a strong and flexible mesh that drapes down its steel base.
The Chainmail Chair’s design supports Felix Guattari’s concept of “a body without organs”, a body that is open to different forms of expression: to pain, to pleasure, to pleasure in pain, a body concentrated on its primal instincts. It expresses and questions our wish for constraint.
Artisanal craftsmanship and a strong attention to detail are brought to the foreground in this piece. Linked rings, produced in collaboration with a local jewellery artist in Mexico City, form the highly tactile seat, fluidly forming to support the user, while the T-structure of its base provides a solid anchor.
