Roly Poly Polyethylene Armchair in Flesh by Faye Toogood for Driade

Since founding her eponymous studio in 2008, English designer Faye Toogood (b. 1977) has released her visionary works in a series of numbered Assemblages, which is the term she uses to refer to her furniture collections. The wonderfully chunky Roly-Poly armchair is from the fourth, launched at the Salone del Mobile in Milan in 2014. As its name suggests, it is part of a series based on squat, bulbous shapes that comprise chairs, tables and benches.The armchair is likely the most roly-poly of the line, with its concave seat taking the shape of an ice cream scoop, sides swooped high enough to account for armrests. Toogood’s jumping-off point for the collection was her own experience with pregnancy and motherhood, an inspiration that is multifaceted: For one, there are the rounded shapes associated with fertility and, literally, pregnancy; then, the resulting pieces feel inherently childlike, as though drawn from a storybook illustration, and are the result, the designer has said, of seeing the world through her children’s eyes.Toogood originally created the Roly-Poly armchair in small batches, handcrafting each chair from a clay model and realizing the piece in fiberglass. A collaboration with the Italian manufacturer Driade brought the seat into larger-scale production in an iteration made from polyethylene, making it suitable for both indoor and outdoor use. It comes in ochre yellow, red brick, peat, charcoal, concrete and flesh colors.