Invisible Personage, a surrealistic armchair by Salvador Dalí, produced by BD Barcelona Design

3 agosto, 2016

The «Invisible Personage» armchair is part of the BD long tradition in the production and marketing of furniture depicted by Salvador Dali in his paintings.

It began in 1991 with the launch of the Leda chair and low table, taken from the painting «Femme à la tête rose» (1935). It continued in 2014 with the commercialisation of the Xai table, extracted from the «Interpretation Project for a stable-library» (1942) painting, and again in 2016 with the launch of the chair «Invisible Personage» which featured in the painting «Singularities« in 1935.

BD‘s relationship with Salvador Dalí dates back to the late 60s, when Oscar Tusquets Blanca, co-founder and partner of BD, began a long friendship with the artist. This allowed them to be invited to his home in Portlligat and attend meetings, gatherings and parties organised frequently by Dalí and his wife, Gala. Tusquets was also the designer and architect of the Mae-West room at the Dalí’s Museu in Figueres. When Salvador Dalí created the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation, he appointed Oscar Tusquets as a life patron of the Foundation, a fact that has allowed and strengthened BD‘s close relationship with the legacy of Dalí.

The production and marketing of Salvador Dalí’s designs poses exciting challenges. Everything is done in conjunction with the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation, which oversees the quality of the work and gives the final approval. In the absence or technical drawings or definitions of the materials to be used, BD’s design team look for the materials that best suit the design, putting on Salvador Dalí’s shoes and imagining his opinion of the project.

According to Oscar Tusquets, «The surreal effect of these works lie, as the name suggests, in the depiction of the footprints of a character that has never been portrayed.» As for the materials used, we were looking for a non-synthetic material that could provide long hair for the outside of the armchair and short hair for part of the tread. We found Tibetan sheep shearling, which worked perfectly for the outside, and used ram skin shearling for the tread.