About this product
Big Mama UP Chair by Gaetano Pesce for B&B Italia, Italy Circa 2000
Gaetano Pesce Big Mama UP Chair
Furniture manufacturer B&B Italia (then known as C&B) produced the seat the next year. It was innovative, it was easily transported, it was the future. Or so the firm thought. In 1973 B&B Italia ceased production of Up after discovering that Freon, the leavening ingredient mixed with polyurethane, was harmful to the ozone layer. But the chair had already made a name for itself… actually several. Referred to as La Mamma, Big Mama, and Donna, nearly 50 years later the icon (B&B introduced a Freon-free version in 2000) has developed quite a following (fashion designer Lisa Perry; Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis). Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, who has shown Pesce’s work at her New York gallery Salon 94, calls it “practical radical.”
Literature: Gaetano Pesce Architecture Design Art, Vanlaethem, pg. 52 discusses the UP series Repertorio 1950-1980, Gramigna, pg. 288 100 Masterpieces from the Vitra Design Museum, von Vegesack, ppg. 50-51
