Antropus Armchair

Overview

Antropus is an armchair by Marco Zanuso, credited to 1949 by the page and by sheet 721. Cassina describes a design armchair upholstered entirely in leather or fabric, with a roomy seat flanked by curved side panels.

Construction

• Padding: polyurethane foam; the sheet lists cold moulded and flexible polyurethane foam and resin-bonded polyester fibre with light velvet.
• Internal structure: tubular steel frame, elastic webbing.
• Feet: black plastic material.
• Upholstery: fabric or leather in ten ranges, plus an iconic red wool edition.

Specifications

• 77, 102 and 86 cm (axes not labelled on the drawing).

Sets for La Famiglia Antropus

Cassina dates the origin of Antropus to the end of the 1940s, when Marco Zanuso designed stage sets at Milan's Piccolo Teatro for a play by Thornton Wilder; in Italian the play carried the title "La Famiglia Antropus".

Foam rubber upholstery

Zanuso worked with Arflex to make an armchair fully upholstered in foam rubber, a material the text calls highly innovative at the time. Cassina's present-day version uses CFC-free polyurethane foam and is offered in the original red upholstery as well as in fabric and leather ranges.