Two chairs featuring different forms, materials and backgrounds, by Michele De Lucchi and Luca Nichetto, two designers from different generations. They make up De Padova’s show for this year’s Furniture Fair, presented in the Corso Venezia showroom in a captivating showcase design by JoAnn Tan, drawing on outsized models and sketches to illustrate the different stages in the design process.

De Lucchi’s Donzella is a finely crafted, archetypal chair produced in response to the company’s demand for “a new Carimate” (the chair designed by Vico Magistretti for Cassina in 1960), a chair “for the people” that was a reincarnation of the tub chair. De Lucchi says he was “inspired by the deftness of the farmer/craftsman who made his own work tools and the ingenuity that sees the potential to turn everyday materials, those always before our eyes, into implements. This chair exploits the fantastic joint invented by someone unknown many years ago to resolve the problem of connecting the seat to the legs.”

By contrast, Luca Nichetto’s Deck is a seating system that combines the resilience of outdoor furnishings with the elegance of indoor seating. Nichetto was inspired by the “great cruise liners of old, with their long sea promenades. The decks were in marine timber, which is resistant to humidity, salt and bad weather, as was the seating that lined them.”