Entirely Brazilian

At this year's Milan furniture fair the German manufacturer ClassiCon presented some famous classic creations by Sergio Rodriges, a real doyen of Brazilian furniture design. With his work Rodrigues managed to give Brazilian design its own identity and with his casual 'Mole' armchair he attracted well-deserved international recognition - "modern furniture in the spirit of Brazilian tradition," as Oskar Niemeyer remarked. From this year on ClassiCon will be marketing some of these classics. We had the honour of interviewing Sergio Rodrigues in Milan.

Mr Rodrigues, you both witnessed and played a major part in the development and transformation of Brazilian design. What was your motivation in beginning to design furniture in the middle of last century?
Until the Forties, furniture design in Brazil still showed strong influence of the colonial and baroque styles, in other words European influences. And even the initial more innovative designs were still clearly oriented towards modern European and American design. People were still looking very much across the Atlantic to the Old World. The first architect who really began to give Brazilian design its own identity and to create his designs against the cultural background of Brazil was Joaquim Tenreiro.

To some extent your designs make an archaic impression. Are the materials and their processing perhaps the reaction to limitations in the available manufacturing technology?
Yes, whereas Tenreiro's models to some extent required European processing methods, I wanted to design something that would be entirely Brazilian. My furniture was to be clearly identifiable in cultural terms and communicate a Brazilian identity. This is why I used typical materials such as leather and wood, and designs which could be produced with local resources. That was my philosophy.

...which you put into practice with your own company, 'Oca Industries'.
Oca was an institution which aimed at providing a platform for modern Brazilian product culture, whether it's furniture, art or industrial design. We soon made a name as a studio for interior design and stage sets, as well as an art gallery, which promoted contemporary Brazilian design. By the way, 'Oca' is the Indian word for 'House'.

But at that time Brazilian architecture was already highly respected internationally.
The architecture of Oskar Niemeyer and Lúcio Costas was already world famous, but there wasn't any Brazilian furniture with which these fantastic buildings could be furnished. That was a niche which I wanted to fill.
However, I didn't receive real international recognition for my designs until I was awarded a prize for the 'Mole' armchair during the ‘IV. Concorso Internazionale del Mobile’ in Italy in 1961. All at once the architects began to notice me and recognised me as a "modern" designer. It was still necessary to win a European prize in order to be noticed.

The German manufacturer ClassiCon now has the European sales licence for your furniture, which is still, however, produced in Brazil – in contrast to the individual components of a lot of furniture, which are manufactured in different countries and then assembled somewhere.
Yes, and the inevitable result is that the cultural background of a piece of furniture is lost completely, even though furniture and its design are an important aspect of any culture. Let's just hope that we can return to this tradition again soon.