Cini Boeri: an armchair that lets your gaze through

Can an armchair occupy a room while letting us see through it? Ghost presents this apparent contradiction without making the object disappear. The Corning Museum of Glass holds an example of the 1987 design, credited to Cini Boeri and Tomu Katayanagi and manufactured by Fiam Italia. Its material is colourless glass with a slight natural green tint. The seat exists, yet it does not block the view completely as an opaque surface would. Here, the ghost concerns our gaze. [1]

The collaboration matters as much as the famous name. The National Gallery of Victoria presents Ghost as a design by both creators for Fiam, connecting it with experimentation in glass furniture production. Boeri had established her own studio in Milan in 1963. This was therefore not an isolated trick appearing without expertise: an idea about space met the processing of a material and a company able to realise it. Crediting only one person would erase part of that history. [2]

Corning describes a single rectangular sheet, cut and bent over a mould in a kiln, twelve millimetres thick. A horizontal cut separates the ribbon-like back from the arm and seat area; the edges are polished. We can follow the surface instead of immediately looking for four legs and a separately assembled seat. This is not an invitation to bend glass at home. The object depends on a specific manufacturing technique, rather than only on a shape drawn on paper. [1]

MoMA also records Ghost as a glass armchair designed in 1987, preserving both designers’ names. Its presence in a collection allows us to consider it as a design question as well as a piece of furniture. Transparency does not mean an absence of matter; continuity does not mean an absence of work. These distinctions are useful when a photograph makes an object seem almost immaterial. The image invites imagination, while the record reminds us of materials, dimensions, designers and manufacturer. [3]

Here is an editorial exercise: imagine the same corner of a room first with an opaque chair, then with a transparent seat. How much of the floor can you still see? Where do you look for the outline? We are not measuring comfort or strength, or claiming that one material is better in every situation. We are separating physical presence from perceived presence. Ghost makes this question particularly clear: something can be there while leaving more room for the gaze that passes through it. [1][2]