Upholstered Easy Armchair

The Upholstered Easy Armchair is available in a choice of seven Andaman fabric colours and three Bompuka fabric colours from specialty textile company, Zanav.

Andaman is a cotton-linen blend fabric woven in a simple Panama weave. The entire process of yarn winding, warping, denting, drawing and dyeing is done by hand. The fabric is dyed using the traditional vat-dyeing process in which the yarn is turned manually in and out of a vat containing solubilised dyes, resulting in continuous reduction and oxidation deep into the fibre until the desired colour is achieved. The yarn picks up dye differentially, and the result is a subtle inconsistency of colour which is the hallmark of all vat-dyed fabrics. The final fabric is woven on traditional power looms, the likes of which are seldom used today.

Bompuka is a 100% cotton upholstery fabric designed by Belgian textile designer Fabienne Collet for Zanav. As with all Zanav fabrics, Bompuka is produced by processes that are mostly manual, with nearly extinct power-looms used for the final fabric weave. These old looms have limited pattern options, and out of this constraint, Collet created a unique fabric by experimenting with the interplay of weave, colour and light. For example, twisting two differently coloured vat dyed yarns brings a play of light to the matte cotton fibre and blurs the edges of the very small geometric repeat. Bompuka requires a high level of skill and craftsmanship; it would not be possible to design and produce it consistently if hand and culture was missing from the process.

The Upholstered Easy Armchair can be ordered in a choice of two wood finishes: Z3 Stripped Black and Z4 Walnut. Both these finishes have been developed specially by Phantom Hands for the Zanav Collection. The Z3 Stripped Black finish is achieved by first spraying the wood with a water-based black paint, then sanding the paint off to leave behind only a light residue of the black colour in the wood grain patterns. The Z4 Walnut finish is attained by first hand-staining the wood with a water-based walnut stain, and then applying a coat of wood sealer.