Asked about the inspiration for his first Big Easy chair, constructed in 1988, London-based artist and designer Ron Arad says, “I was thinking about an overstuffed club chair.” He had just learned to weld and found that steel was quite forgiving. “I could bend it, cut it, weld it, fold it, torture the piece of metal until it made a comfortable chair.”
He calls the first ones “super primitive”—hollow, cartoonish volumes that riffed on the living-room staple. It looked like his sketch: a quick, rough shape patinated with acid. Undeniably punk. And, believe it or not, comfortable.
“They’re crudely made, the bottom isn’t flush on the floor, but they actually sit pretty well,” explains dealer Lawrence Converso, who bought two of the originals, from Miami Beach’s Century Hotel, at a…
