The Joe armchair adopts the shape of a giant leather baseball glove mounted on invisible wheels. Inspired by Pop Art, designers De Pas, D'Urbino and Lomazzi give material form to their admiration for American baseball legend Joe DiMaggio with the Joe armchair. Beyond its highly original shape, Joe is a comfortable and welcoming armchair whose leather upholstery embodies the exceptional workmanship of Italian leatherwork. Designed in the 1970s in collaboration with Poltronova, Joe required very precise handwork to faithfully reproduce the classic leather baseball glove on a large scale, so each Joe armchair is unique. This giant armchair came into being thanks to the groundbreaking technical innovations of the preformed expanded polyurethane era, enabling objects to be moulded into any shape. The armchairJoe, published by Poltronova, has found a place for itself in the permanent collections of prestigious institutions such as the MoMa in New York, the Triennale Design Museum in Milan and the ADAM Museum in Brussels. Joe has also been featured in numerous temporary exhibitions around the world.
Poltronova is a renowned company that has significantly shaped the history of design. Founded in 1957 by Sergio Cammilli, it was the first to include both prominent Italian design names such as Gae Aulenti, Giovanni Michelucci, Angelo Mangiarotti, and Paolo Portoghesi, as well as representatives of the New Design movement, known as the Radicals, including the groups Archizoom and Superstudio. This multidimensional approach reflected the diversity and boldness of Italian design at the time. Ettore Sottsass Jr. played a pivotal role in Poltronova's history by becoming its artistic director in 1958.