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The MP-89 armchair (1970) was<br />
made with a diagonally cut<br />
Plexiglas cylinder, fishing net,<br />
and leather cushions (above).<br />
A late 1970s ad for the MP-163<br />
armchair and footrest (1976):<br />
Dubbed the “Earth Chair” by<br />
retailer Brazil Contempo, it<br />
was Lafer’s first design to<br />
feature an inner structural<br />
steel frame (below).<br />
Mention modern Brazilian furniture<br />
and names like Sergio Rodrigues,<br />
Joaquim Tenreiro, and Jorge Zalszupin<br />
come to mind. Yet the most prolific<br />
Brazilian furniture designer from the<br />
early 1960s to the mid-1980s is arguably<br />
Percival Lafer, comparatively unknown<br />
in the USA despite the examples of his<br />
work for sale today on 1stdibs and eBay.<br />
Lafer credits the availability of his<br />
work here to the 35 Brazil Contempo<br />
stores that existed stateside from 1970<br />
to 1985. When he began making furniture<br />
in 1961, his vision was to “bring<br />
good design to everyone, not just the<br />
intellectual elite” with modern, wellmade<br />
pieces that were mass-produced<br />
and affordable. That he did, with “an<br />
incomparable product for the price,”<br />
says Joanne Podell, cofounder of the<br />
now-defunct retailer. “Percival’s furniture<br />
not only captured the modern<br />
aesthetic of the moment, but was<br />
exquisitely crafted using gorgeous,<br />
solid hardwoods that were novel to<br />
U.S. consumers.” With burnished leather<br />
upholstery and meticulous finishing<br />
details, Lafer’s pieces were also big sellers<br />
in Western Europe and Scandinavia.<br />
Ironically, Lafer never intended to be<br />
a furniture-maker. In 1960, as a senior at<br />
the prestigious Mackenzie Presbyterian<br />
University College of Architecture in<br />
São Paulo, he’d already admired Tenreiro,<br />
Zalszupin, and the then-emerging<br />
Rodrigues, all renowned for embracing<br />
Brazil’s nascent design ethos of the midcentury.<br />
But like 2006 Pritzker Prize<br />
winner Paulo Mendes da Rocha, who<br />
graduated from Mackenzie in 1954 and<br />
began making waves with his innovative<br />
concrete buildings by the early 1960s,<br />
Lafer planned to practice architecture—<br />
until his father, a furniture dealer, died<br />
right before his graduation.<br />
While mourning, “my brothers and I<br />
decided to all work together to insure the<br />
continuity of the company,” says Lafer.<br />
“But I didn’t want to do retail, and our<br />
lines were traditional.” He found solace<br />
66 SEPTEMBER <strong>2015</strong> DWELL
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