There are plenty of places to sit inside San Francisco’s Italian Cultural Institute this summer. Designs from the Poltrona Frau Group, the furniture manufacturers of Cappellini and Poltrona Frau, are artfully placed on the space’s ground floor as part of two exhibitions, “Poltrona Frau: 100 years of Italian Leathership” and “Cappellini’s Heroes: Explorers of Design Between Imagination and Reality,” on display simultaneously at the Jackson Square space through July 10. The Cappellini collection was curated by Giulio Cappellini and includes designs by such talents as Marcel Wanders, Tom Dixon and Alessandro Mendini. Each armchair in the Poltrona Frau exhibition represents a 10-year time period of the company’s history and, when viewed together, the show provides a look at the evolution of design over the past 100 years. Pull up a chair and stay awhile.

 

By Elizabeth Varnell

Pictured: Poltrona Frau Archives 1919 chair

Photo courtesy of the Italian Cultural Institute

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