DEPARTURES CULTURE
DEPARTURES CULTURE GREAT SOURCES 48 classic Mexican butaque chair, with its sinuously curved wood frame. “Porset offered us an opportunity to highlight a female designer who was doing amazing things in the mid- 20th century that are still admired today,” she says. Born in Cuba in 1895 and educated in both the US and France, Porset fled Cuba for Mexico as a political exile in 1935. She was soon working with prominent architects like Luis Barragán and Mario Pani on everything from high-end residences and restaurants to housing projects, and her design for a steel-tube chair was included in the catalogue of MoMA’s International Competition for Low-Cost Furniture Design in 1950. Her interiors and furniture were known for integrating her modernist education with a genuine interest in Mexican traditions. Porset owed the latter in part to her travels throughout the country with her husband, Xavier Guerrero, a well-known muralist and activist. But as humanistic as her approach was, Porset’s aesthetic had no room for frills; as she said in a 1931 lecture, “We are in a position to perceive and appreciate an austere beauty stripped of all ornament.” Porset’s brief return to Cuba after the 1959 revolution to work with the Castro regime alienated many of her peers. But in her later years in Mexico, Porset resumed her long career teaching industrial design at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM); her work was recognised in Mexican museum exhibitions, and she received various awards before her death in 1981. Porset was not the only 20thcentury designer who was fascinated by the butaque; it was also interpreted by William Spratling, who is best known for his work in silver, and by van Beuren, whose own, more reductive version is also now being made by Luteca. Porset, however, was keen on maximising the chair’s ergonomic potential, as well as respecting its vernacular roots. Later this year, Luteca will introduce another well-known Porset design, the Totonaca chair, inspired by a sculpture dating to the fifth or sixth century BC. Luteca worked with UNAM, which houses the designer’s archive, to develop the technical drawings for all these pieces. Another Mexico-based project, Luteca’s Txt.ure line, was developed by Regina Pozo in collaboration with the last remaining group of native artisans still weaving tule (a marsh plant similar to a cattail) – a craft that dates back to the Mayans. Together, they’re working on a series of seating. From top: designer Clara Porset (right); a Porset coffee table by Luteca inside the Mexico City showroom Luteca produces its furniture in the US but has added a factory in Mexico to meet the demand for projects there, like Jon Brent Design’s Four Seasons Resort Los Cabos and Cherem Arquitectos’ 1 Hotel Cabo. Last year Luteca opened a showroom in Mexico City. And now the company has just opened its first US showroom, in New York City, giving it an outlet to broadcast its message to even greater numbers of designers. “We’re trying to reach a global audience,” Amanda says. “But Mexican design is still influenced by local cultures and traditions. It’s very personal.” FROM TOP: ARCHIVES OF AMERICAN ART, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, ESTHER MCCOY PAPERS; © LUTECA; PIA RIVEROLA
