Cuban-born mid-century furniture maker and interior designer Clara Porset is having a moment in museums such as New York’s Museum of Modern Art and beyond, with attention being paid not just to her designs for chairs, lamps and tables but to her life story, with its ties to feminism, modernization and the identification of value in indigenous materials and methods.
Born into a wealthy Cuban family, Porset studied at Columbia University, the Sorbonne and Black Mountain College in North Carolina, which she attended at the urging of Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius and where her teachers included Josef and Anni Albers.
A critic of Cuba’s right-wing government, she left her home country for Mexico, with its more simpatico regime, in 1935. With her Mexican husband, painter Xavier Guerrero, she threw herself into studying that country’s design traditions, and together the two were winners of MoMA’s Organic Design in Home Furnishings competition in 1941. (Porset was unfortunately not recognized at the time for her contribution but has since been credited alongside her husband for the entry.)
Like Porset, other designers of the mid-century era such as Cynthia Sargent, Don Shoemaker and the Bauhaus-trained architect Michael van Beuren who had relocated to Mexico found inspiration in their adopted country. Klaus Grabe, Morley Webb and van Beuren were also named among the Mexico-based winners of MoMA’s 1941 competition. (And van Beuren's furniture brand Domus produced Porset's designs in addition to his own.)
Fascinated by a Spanish-inflected Mexican wood-and-wicker chair called the butaque, Porset developed her own version by tweaking proportions and incorporating new materials.
According to art critic and curator Ana Elena Mallet, its design was “a manifestation of her profound engagement with Mexican craft traditions” at a time when “discussions surrounding the definition of Mexican identity were paramount within the larger political landscape.” In this view, “Porset’s Butaque becomes not merely a chair but a tangible expression of the socio-political discourse of its time,” she says. Or, as Paola Antonelli, MoMA’s senior curator of architecture and design, told the New York Times, “This is the Latin American chair.”
Porset designed many other chairs, some in collaboration with the preeminent Mexican architect Luis Barragán. She returned to Cuba in 1959, after Fidel Castro came to power, with high hopes, but when her plans to start a design school (under Che Guevara, Castro’s minister of industries from 1961 to 1965) foundered, she returned to Mexico, where she continued to promote design for the rest of her life.
Find vintage Clara Porset furniture for sale on 1stDibs.
Clara Porset's Mexican Walnut & Hemp Butaque Chair, licensed reedition by Luteca
By Clara Porset, Luteca Furniture
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Cuban-born Clara Porset was a pioneer for modern design in Mexico. Having studied architecture in New York and then Paris, she finally settled in Mexico devoting her life to champion...
Walnut, Hemp
Tropical Hardwood and Rattan, Butaque Chair, Outdoor Use, Licensed Reedition
By Clara Porset, Luteca Furniture
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Cuban-born Clara Porset was a pioneer for modern design in Mexico. Having studied architecture in New York and then Paris, she finally settled in Mexico devoting her life to championing her mutually enriching vision of modernity and tradition. A fierce proponent of historical craft traditions, Clara Porset created wholly contemporary versions of the classic Mexican vernacular forms including the colonial butaque chair...
Rattan, Hardwood
19th Century Biedermeier Walnut Chair. Vienna, c. 1825
Located in Vienna, AT
Hello, This fine Biedermeier side chair was made in Vienna circa 1825. Viennese Biedermeier pieces are distinguished by their sophisticated proportions, rare and refined design, exc...
Upholstery, Walnut
Rattan Rattan Lounge Chair by Isamu Kenmochi , Circa 1980s
By Yamakawa Rattan, Isamu Kenmochi
Located in Sammu-shi, Chiba
Rattan sofa designed by Isamu Kenmochi and manufactured by Yamakawa Rattan. Circa 1980s. No restorations or modifications have been made. The cushion is also original vintage condition.
Upholstery, Rattan
Mexican Sabino Wood Live Edge Wood Chair
Located in Las Vegas, NV
Great, primitive live edge chair. Perfect corner piece to compliment any wabisabi, minimalist or rustic decor. Chair has natural inclusions and light wear that add to it's charact...
Wood
$2,000
H 27.17 in W 27.56 in D 30.71 in
Antique Iron and Palm Lounge Chair in the Style of Clara Porset
By Clara Porset
Located in Mexico City, CDMX
We offer this Antique Lounge Chair in the Style of Clara Porset, made in solid iron and palm cords, circa 1960.
Metal
Petite Mexican Butaque in the Style of Clara Porset
By Clara Porset
Located in Mexico City, CDMX
We offer this Petite Mexican Butaquein the style of Clara Porset, circa 1950.
Wood
Petite Mexican Butaque
By Clara Porset
Located in Mexico City, CDMX
Circa 1950. We offer this Petite Mexican Butaquein the atyle of Clara Porset in original conditions, we offer the restautration service by our team of professionals.
Wood
$1,070
H 26.38 in W 17.72 in D 22.84 in
Small Antique Mexican Butaque Chair, in the Style of Clara Porset
By Clara Porset
Located in Mexico City, CDMX
We present this small-scale antique Mexican butaque chair, crafted in solid wood with a natural leather seat, representative of mid-20th-century Mexican modern design, in the style o...
Wood, Leather
Biedermeier Chair, South Germany 1820, Walnut
Located in Belmont, MA
Biedermeier chair, South Germany 1820. This beautiful Biedermeier chairs is decorated with a pretty walnut veneer. The open work back is embellished with an ebonized lyre motif. Thi...
Walnut
$3,000
H 27.56 in W 15.75 in D 18.12 in
Surrealist Hand Chair in Style of Pedro Friedberg, Exotic Hardwood, 1970s Mexico
By Salvador Dalí, Pedro Friedeberg
Located in Grand Cayman, KY
Surrealist arm chair inspired by Pedro Friedberg. Carved with exceptional skill from a block of exotic hard wood, likely to be Central American Samanea saman (Monkeypod). The sculpt...
Wood, Walnut
Minimalist Outdoor Chair in Hardwood, Metal and Fabric
By SIMONINI
Located in Vila Cordeiro, São Paulo
This minimalist chair is made for use outdoors with solid wood, metal and fabrics. The chair's multi-finish structure is combined with outdoor fabrics such as the Batyline to create an interesting outdoor solution. Bellow the full Skyfolding collection concept: Skyfolding In-Outdoor Collection, the collection concept is inspired by the Asian building scaffoldings, where a structure is composed by bamboo sticks crossed to create this inspiring and fascinating structures. We combined elements of this structures and also references from the ballet stretching bars that often combine metal and wood, this combo is the concept very soul. All the figurative elements are abstracted in the design process to extract the precise best of each world, and by then resulting in a collection of delicate objects, cult and curated to the minimum details, in design and engineering. The collection is composed by outdoor net, batyline or plastic, in a portion leaving room to a more soft design approach that is harmonious, this elements are combined to a structure made of wood and metal that transcends to tech and soft, a paradigm of past, present and future that invite all the viewers to contemplate and reflect in this philosophical matters in a tactile and visual way. Resulting is a essential and timeless set of objects...
Metal
$8,500
H 37.75 in W 22.5 in D 17.5 in
American Walnut Upholstered Desk Chair, Philadelphia, Circa 1730
Located in Charleston, SC
American walnut desk chair with carved scrolled rails, vase formed shaped splat back, scalloped carved skirt, carved shell on knee, and terminatin...
Muslin, Upholstery, Walnut
Clara Porset 'Butaque' Lounge Chair - II
By Clara Porset
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Clara Porset 'Butaque' lounge chair c.1940s, Mexico. The lounge chair features a curvaceous solid cypress wood frame with the original brown saddle leather sling seat. The leather is...
Leather, Cypress