Falkenberg x Rom AG - White leather and chrome-plated steel armchair - c. 1990 - BE

It's unlike anything known. A taut, seamless curve. Disorienting proportions. A pure, suspended line that seems to defy gravity. The leather spreads out, the base disappears, and the whole thing defies all categories. It could come from yesterday, or from tomorrow. It could also never reappear. It resists the times, whatever they may be. It is neither a trend nor a tribute. It is. And that's enough. This armchair bears a name it doesn't recognize. Too sculptural to be reduced to mere use. Too singular, too. No armrests, no backrest, no seat clearly detached: just a volume, a hollow, an extension—like a rock carved to human scale. The eye believes in the mass, but the body discovers something else. The angle. The depth. The pressure. The leather, bone white, hugs the back without interruption, supporting the pelvis without enclosing it. Everything is exact. Millimeter-perfect. A geometry of the essential. We preferred to write from the source rather than repeat the market. ROM replied: Chili is indeed an in-house model, designed by Paul Falkenberg - chief creative officer of the Eupen workshop, still at work today - and Jean-Marc Jacquemin, distributed in the mid-1980s. Sealed lineage. A name, an edition, a design duo. The story is there, tangible: a piece born in Belgium, land of trades and dialects, where the form speaks several languages, to the point of inventing its own syntax. ROM has cultivated this syntax since 1961: cut just right, prefer the essential, let the form rule. The rest becomes decoration - here, useless. Our version takes on the difficulty of a less common shade. A scrupulous color, which demands care and consistency, here maintained with rare probity. Add this most sought-after white and a first-rate outfit: you get true rarity, the one that reduces the visible supply to the infinitesimal. -- Origin & Period: Paul Falkenberg X Rom AG - Belgium, c. 1988/92 Condition: TB+ (8.7/10).