HYLAND
just visible from the street. Somehow the image spoke
volumes, rather like an infanta peeping from behind a
fan. Spanish design is both severe and seductive, all
Inquisition and black lace. Another quintessentially
Spanish design statement which comes to mind is the
all-wood interior, venerably mantled in nicotine, of the
Madrid sherry bar, La Venencia, where barrels of sherry
stand sentinel and your bill is chalked up on the wooden
bar: absolute simplicity while one eases into civilized
inebriation.
BD manufactures fine reproductions of Spanish classics,
some of them bizarre, from Gaudi's bony, biomorphic
chairs and benches of solid varnished oak and bronze
door furniture to Salvador Dali's 1936 "Mae West"
Lips sofa which he designed in collaboration with the
eccentric English poet and collector, Edward James.
James produced five exemplars of the sofa, all of which
he kept. In 1972, Dali, together
with Oscar Tusquets, created
"Mae West" anew for the Dali
Museum in Figueres, but it
was only thirty years later that
industrial production became
possible due to polyethylene
rotational molding technology.
One of Dali's inspirations for
the sofa, he said, was a group
Below:
Lounger 3
