As much as it is a piece of innovative design the Up chair was also a political statement. The design was inspired by an ancient fertility goddess and the ball and chain symbolizes women being prisoners, not a victim of design. “Women suffer because of the prejudice of men. The chair was supposed to talk about this problem.”

Born in La Spezia in 1939 Gaetano Pesce went to study in Venice at the School of Architecture and then the Institute of Industrial Design. After graduating he worked with collective of young architects in Padua before focusing on design from 1962.

Endlessly researching and experimenting with new materials he started working with the trendiest material of the day, polyurethane. Standing in the shower in his Paris apartment in 1968 Gaetano Pesce got the idea to try and make a chair behave like a sponge. In his workshop he realized that polyurethane was a perfect material not only for comfort but he could actually vacuum pack his new design. Opening the four-inch-thick package his new chair would almost magically expand into its proper shape rendering its name Up. This extraordinary and irreversible performance was made possible thanks to the freon gas present in the polyurethane blend.

This easily packaged and shipped future of furniture design unfortunately didn’t last long. In 1973, after only four years of international success with the Up Chair turning up in everything from the James Bond movie “Diamonds are Forever” to photo shoots with Salvador Dalì, the producer B&B Italia removed it from its catalog. This was due to a recent ban on freon gas making the production as it was impossible.

It took until the year 2000 for the Up chair to to make its comeback. This time being made in cold shaped polyurethane foam and no longer inflating.