Chita Chair

Brazilian furniture designer Sérgio Matos excels at capturing the spirit of his country and engaging with its Indigenous communities. Like illustrious Brazilian modern designers Sergio Rodrigues, Joaquim Tenreiro and Jorge Zalszupin, Matos creates memorable and uncommon designs. He incorporates local artisanal culture into nearly every piece, differentiating himself through this process from many other contemporary designers and dealers in urban centers like São Paulo.

Matos was born in 1976 in Mato Grosso, a region in Brazil that includes the Xingu Indigenous Park within the Amazon rainforest. He graduated with a degree in marketing from the Universidade de Cuiabá before moving to Paraíba to study design at the Federal University of Campina Grande. After his education, Matos immersed himself in the local Indigenous cultures and drew inspiration from the lively use of color at events like the maracatu nação parade in Pernambuco and one of Paraíba’s longest-running festivals, Festa de São João. 

His best-known designs feature naval rope wrapped around aluminum or steel carbon structures, like the starfruit-shaped Carambola stool. Some of his furnishings, like the dorsal-patterned Cobra Coral chair, employ this technique in tandem with the use of colors found naturally in the local environment. Designs such as the Taturana bench are more subtle; it borrows its form from the Amazonian taturana caterpillar. Some of his earlier works like the Chita swing are informed by the Indian fabrics introduced to Brazil, while others repurpose materials like saddle straps, such as the Movimento Armorial-inspired Arreio chair.

Matos has exhibited his work at Milan’s Salone del Mobile. Credited with connecting the radical designs of the Campana Brothers and fellow Brazilian designer Lina Bo Bardi to international markets, the design show likewise contributed to his worldwide acclaim. At the request of Salone curator Marva Griffin, Matos exhibited at the 2010 show, opening his studio that same year. He went on to exhibit in the show four more times, including in 2020 alongside his studio’s 10-year anniversary.

On 1stDibs, find a collection of Sérgio Matos seating, tables and garden elements.

More often than not, vintage mid-century Brazilian furniture designs, with their gleaming wood, soft leathers and inviting shapes, share a sensuous, unique quality that distinguishes them from the more rectilinear output of American and Scandinavian makers of the same era.

Commencing in the 1940s and '50s, a group of architects and designers transformed the local cultural landscape in Brazil, merging the modernist vernacular popular in Europe and the United States with the South American country's traditional techniques and indigenous materials.

Key mid-century influencers on Brazilian furniture design include natives Oscar Niemeyer, Sergio Rodrigues and José Zanine Caldas as well as such European immigrants as Joaquim Tenreiro, Jean Gillon and Jorge Zalszupin. These creators frequently collaborated; for instance, Niemeyer, an internationally acclaimed architect, commissioned many of them to furnish his residential and institutional buildings.

The popularity of Brazilian modern furniture has made household names of these designers and other greats. Their particular brand of modernism is characterized by an émigré point of view (some were Lithuanian, German, Polish, Ukrainian, Portuguese, and Italian), a preference for highly figured indigenous Brazilian woods, a reverence for nature as an inspiration and an atelier or small-production mentality.

Hallmarks of Brazilian mid-century design include smooth, sculptural forms and the use of native woods like rosewood, jacaranda and pequi. The work of designers today exhibits many of the same qualities, though with a marked interest in exploring new materials (witness the Campana Brothers' stuffed-animal chairs) and an emphasis on looking inward rather than to other countries for inspiration.

Find a collection of vintage Brazilian furniture on 1stDibs that includes chairs, sofas, tables and more.

Armchairs have run the gamut from prestige to ease and everything in between, and everyone has an antique or vintage armchair that they love.

Long before industrial mass production democratized seating, armchairs conveyed status and power.

In ancient Egypt, the commoners took stools, while in early Greece, ceremonial chairs of carved marble were designated for nobility. But the high-backed early thrones of yore, elevated and ornate, were merely grandiose iterations of today’s armchairs.

Modern-day armchairs, built with functionality and comfort in mind, are now central to tasks throughout your home. Formal dining armchairs support your guests at a table for a cheery feast, a good drafting chair with a deep seat is parked in front of an easel where you create art and, elsewhere, an ergonomic wonder of sorts positions you at the desk for your 9 to 5.

When placed under just the right lamp where you can lounge comfortably, both elbows resting on the padded supports on each side of you, an upholstered armchair — or a rattan armchair for your light-suffused sunroom — can be the sanctuary where you’ll read for hours.

If you’re in the mood for company, your velvet chesterfield armchair is a place to relax and be part of the conversation that swirls around you. Maybe the dialogue is about the beloved Papa Bear chair, a mid-century modern masterpiece from Danish carpenter and furniture maker Hans Wegner, and the wingback’s strong association with the concept of cozying up by the fireplace, which we can trace back to its origins in 1600s-era England, when the seat’s distinctive arm protrusions protected the sitter from the heat of the period’s large fireplaces.

If the fireside armchair chat involves spirited comparisons, your companions will likely probe the merits of antique and vintage armchairs such as Queen Anne armchairs, Victorian armchairs or even Louis XVI armchairs, as well as the pros and cons of restoration versus conservation.

Everyone seems to have a favorite armchair and most people will be all too willing to talk about their beloved design. Whether that’s the unique Favela chair by Brazilian sibling furniture designers Fernando and Humberto Campana, who repurposed everyday objects to provocative effect; or Marcel Breuer’s futuristic tubular metal Wassily lounge chair; the functionality-first LC series from Charlotte Perriand, Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret; or the Eames lounge chair of the mid-1950s created by Charles and Ray Eames, there is an iconic armchair for everyone and every purpose. Find yours on 1stDibs right now.