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Paul Falkenberg x Rom AG – “Chili” Lounge Chair in White Leather and Chromed Steel – c. 1985 – Belgium
€2,370
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Product description
It resembles nothing familiar. A taut, unbroken curve. Disorienting proportions. A pure line, suspended, as if defying gravity. The leather unfurls, the base withdraws, and the whole slips past every category.
It could be from yesterday—or from tomorrow. It might never return. It resists whatever era would claim it. Neither trend nor tribute. It is. And that is enough.
Everything here sits beyond the lexicon—at the threshold of what matter allows. It arrives with no attested precedent, no avowed lineage. A free body, born of no system. A form wrested from refusal: refusal to belong, to imitate, to yield. And the keen sense of standing before something that will not recur.
It bears a name it does not recognize. Too sculptural to be reduced to use. Too singular, too.
No armrests, no back, no seat clearly detached: just a volume, a hollow, a continuation—like a boulder cut to human scale. The eye believes in mass, yet the body discovers something else. Angle. Depth. Pressure. The bone-white leather follows the back without interruption, supports the pelvis without enclosing it. No sway. No hesitation. Everything is exact. Millimetric. A geometry of the essential.
And then that instant—when dispersion, noise, speed cease. Function is abolished to become passage. Passage into the in-between. No longer earth, not yet sky—but a suspended place. The triangle grounds, a figure contradicted by gravity’s very negation. The chrome, held back, erases contact with the floor instead of asserting it. What weighs rises. What bears disappears. The object no longer seats: it opens to the instant, not to use. And in that instant a breach appears. Breath slows; attention sharpens. It is a call to withdrawal, to the world’s silence—to that which asks nothing yet compels being, pure presence. All that remained of function recedes. It is no longer an armchair: it is what escapes the verb.
We chose to go to the source rather than echo the market. ROM replied: Chili is indeed an in-house model, designed by Paul Falkenberg—creative head of the Eupen studio, still at work today—and Jean-Marc Jacquemin, released in the mid-1980s under the Escapade label. Lineage sealed.
A name, an edition, a duo of designers. The history is tangible: a piece born in Belgium, a country of trades and dialects where form speaks several languages—line, tension, ascetic restraint—until it invents a syntax of its own. ROM has cultivated that syntax since 1961: cut true, prefer the essential, let form set the law. The rest is décor—here, unnecessary.
Our example embraces the challenge of a less common tone. Clarity that demands, clarity that rewards. A scrupulous color, asking for care and constancy, here preserved with rare integrity—clean profile, disciplined hide, continuous line. Add this white—the most sought-after—to a first-rate condition and you arrive at real rarity, the kind that shrinks the visible offer to the barest few. Already few, Chili listings form a tight inventory; in this light hue their passage is brief—seen, already spoken for.
But let us spare the proofs. What is evident has no need of naming.
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Dimensions (cm): 90 (H) × 100 (W) × 79 (D) × 42 (Seat H)
Weight: 19.3 kg
Origin & Period: Paul Falkenberg × ROM AG — Belgium, c. 1979/89
Overall Condition: Near-Excellent (8.7/10).
Graded according to our internal scale. Full criteria available upon request via direct message.
Overall Condition: Near-Excellent (8.7/10). Graded according to our internal scale. Full criteria available upon request via direct message.
Overall Condition: Near-Excellent (8.7/10). Graded according to our internal scale. Full criteria available upon request via direct message.
Specifications
ConditionVery goodColorsWhite, SilverMaterialChrome, LeatherNumber of items1Height90 cmWidth100 cmDepth79 cmSeat height42 cmSigns of usageScratches, Stains
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Saint-Martin-Lestra, FranceOn Whoppah since November 2024 • 3 sales