Paola Lenti Outdoor Furniture
5 August 2010
“That’s What You Are”
This particular line of outdoor furniture is the sort of thing that that I can very much picture on the patio of someone with lots of money. In fact I know people who live in one of the more expensive communities in Southern California, and I can certainly envision outdoor furniture like this sitting on their hilltop patio with its unblocked view of a good share of the moneyed world. No, no. No envy, not me, wouldn’t be prudent. But all kidding aside, theirs is a home of genuine grace-as are they-and something like this patio furniture would do much to bring just the right touch to what they have always viewed as the crown jewel of their home. And, truly, when you’re sitting on that patio, which I have on a few occasions, there is a wonderful warm feeling there, one of refined tastes, to be sure, because that’s how they live, but also just one of an extended family getting together. It’s a difficult mixture, and not many achieve it.
Simple elegance has always been my wife’s favorite combination of attributes for decorating items, but I do think she has the right on that. Yes, we would like to have elegant things in our home, but we are also the kind of people who live in every room every day. We also like to make our guests welcome. Well, how do you do that, especially the welcoming guests thing, when people do what they so often do-slouch a bit, spill a little, move about a bit, make an occasional mess. I remember some years back when I designed and built a window seat for our living room. When I picked out the fabric for the upholstered cushion, I told the upholsterer that I wanted something durable, because if someone spilled a beer, I did not want it to be a disaster. Well, as it turned out no one spilled a beer-c’mon now, we don’t have THAT kind of friends. But the other side of that coin is that I have never winced when people used that window seat, because I built it to withstand just about anything anyone could throw at it!
I brought all of this up, though, because to me this line of outdoor furniture has exactly the right touch of elegance, which is neither too much nor too little, but just right. Actually, the manufacturer of this furniture, Paola Lenti, also has many lines of interior furniture, but given the time of year, and the extreme heat now bearing down on many parts of the USA and Europe, I decided to focus on their outdoor line of furniture. Actually, that should be lines of furniture, because they have quite a few. Paola Lenti founded his firm in 1994 in Italy’s leading furniture district Meda, Milan. They specialize in rugs and seating furniture for both indoor and outdoor environments, but all of their work is driven by a search for excellence.
The line we feature at the top of this blog is entitled Sabi and has a structure made of stainless steel. The base is natural iroko wood, which is a wood that is gaining increasing acceptance. It is said to have many o
f the water-resisting properties of teak, but is much less expensive, and environmentally safe methods are said to be used in the harvesting of the bulk of the iroko wood now on the market. The fabrics used here represent only some of the many fabrics used by Paola Lenti for their outdoor lines. What they most want to do with all of their furniture, but especially for that which is designed to be used outdoors, is to make it in such a way that it will hold up to any kind of summertime use, from hot sun to heavy rain-not that we San Diegans would be familiar with summer rains! But all of their seat cushions and pillows have removable covers that are available in a wide range of materials and fabrics that have been designed to remain outdoors. The upkeep is designed to be simple, in keeping with a style that revolves around simple elegance. All of which, to me, makes them what they are. Unforgettable.
Joseph
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