GUBI × Bonacina: rattan, woven by hand

Some objects can only be made by hand. The P3 lounge chair and P3S chaise longue — designed by the Italian architect Tito Agnoli in 1964 — are woven in rattan, and GUBI makes them with Bonacina 1889, the leading centre of rattan craft in Italy.

A partnership like this is really a transfer of knowledge: Agnoli's post-war drawings, and more than a century of a single family's weaving expertise, meeting in one chair.

The rhythm of the hand

The P3 sits you upright, light and ready for conversation; the P3S reclines you into it. Both are pure post-war Italian modernism — generous curves, honest material, nothing hidden. Because each frame is wrapped by a weaver rather than a machine, no two pieces are ever quite identical.

No two pieces are identical; their variations reveal the rhythm of human craft.

That variation is not a defect to be tolerated but the signature of the method. A hand-woven chair records the maker in a way a moulded one never can, which is exactly why the design has outlived the trend that produced it.

Rattan, brought outdoors

For the first time, the P3 also steps outside. A weather-resistant synthetic-rattan edition — GUBI's first-ever sun lounger — lets the design move from a Milanese salon to an Australian terrace without losing its character.

It is a careful translation rather than a copy: the same lines and proportions, executed in a material engineered to take sun, salt and rain. The look survives the move; so does the comfort.

A chair worth the wait

Hand-weaving takes time, and a P3 is made to order rather than pulled from a shelf. That is part of the proposition — an object built at the speed of craft is one you keep at the speed of a lifetime.

For an Australian room, indoors or out, it offers something increasingly rare: a genuinely handmade modern classic, made by the people who have been making it best for generations.