Armchair made in Italy genuine unframed leather

Sofas, armchairs, and in any case all the upholstered items by Terra & Colori are produced in QUARRATA, in the province of Pistoia, where lounges, sofas and armchairs have been produced for centuries.

THE HISTORY OF THE QUARRATA LIVING ROOM

"The story that I will write about writing it concerns how the work of the sofa developed first in Quarrata, then of the upholstered living room". Thus begins the manuscript, by Maffeo Morini, which, on a summer day twenty years ago, recalls his past as a worker, Lenzi: it is a man's reflection on an important part of his life, definitely fundamental for the history of a whole city. "It is, the years 1924 - 1925, this told me by my, in Quarrata there was the Lenzi family, made up of, four children, three boys and one girl, father and mother". The Lenzi lived the hard life of many, of their fellow citizens: Alfonso, the head of the family, (called "Fonzino"), was in fact a mattress, that is to say, he undoes and revives the wool of the mattress, of the richest, the only ones who could afford it. Most people would go to bed on the big sack bed (the one that was filled every year when the corn was unwrapped), or in that, full of "vegetable". The eldest of the three sons Homer died in the First World War, then his daughter Nella and his wife, Alfonso continued to retort the mattresses together with his sons Nello and Guido, the latter ex-railway worker fresh from the layoffs, implemented by the Fascio for restructure the institution. How i, Lenzi managed to escape this cramped routine is not very clear. "It is said that the family, Lunardi was in possession of a sofa then called a sofa or canapè, which served as a bed", says Maffeo: "having this sofa broken springs, the family, Lunardi handed it over to Alfonso for repair" and , Alfonso's two sons thought it best to "copy the devices" which, transformed, succeeded in making the sofa a sofa bed. And at the age of nine our Maffeo was then sent to work by, Lenzi, because his mother wanted him to learn a trade. “I started in the evening because I went to school in the morning”. We are now in 1928 and the work is carried out by Guido and Nello, while their father Alfonso has set up a haberdashery that he sells to the women of the village "by company", as they used to say, once, that is, in installments. Meanwhile the company grew and, in 1929 "the sofas were already being shipped by rail", says Maffeo; the models of sofas grew and from these we moved on to the creation of entire lines of living rooms, which were given the names of Italian cities, the important names of an Italy that no longer seemed so far away: Rome, Florence, Siena , Palermo,, Lucca, Imola, Trento; and then still others "up to, reaching the Abyssinian war". The salons then took "the names of the cities over there, Adua, Macallè, and others". In Maffeo's memories, the Lenzi family stubbornly goes up the slope of a hard and always poor life, so much so that when Guido is touched by the disease, he will not say no to a hospitalization "in Switzerland" and for which, a special villa was purchased in that of Buriano, then known as del Bonardi. Here Guido turns off “the hand, the mind of the company”, says Maffeo. And to say, that the work was going well "and the Lenzi were, always getting bigger". Nevertheless, when Guido died, the widow and his son left the scene. Maffeo hardly remembered the names of the workers he found in the company at the moment of his arrival: Piero Guidi, Florido, Sardi, Mario Becagli, Alvaro Barni ... and surely someone else, dissolved in his memory, as a child like sugar in milk. Those same people, those same men workers of Quarrata would have become over five hundred after the war, when the real Florence, Siena, Lucca had to be rebuilt. But this is another story. ,,,,, The story of Lenzi, through the memory of Bruno Pagnini, Taken from the newspaper "La Nazione" by Giancarlo Zampini, Bruno and the story of Lenzi. Quarrata. The Lenzi family made the industrial history of Quarrata, but without valid collaborators it would not have reached that high. Few are left in power to tell this path, one of the last is certainly Bruno Pagnini, born in 1929, whom, we met in the exhibition, of his son Stefano's furniture: << I entered the Lenzi company in 1949> >, says Bruno, << the following year, they assured me and Nello Lenzi entrusted me with a very important task, to follow the small furniture shop that was then at the beginning of, via Roma, where the boutique is currently "Bamboo". I had carte blanche, a trusted man, Nello and his family were great people, serious, always respecting their commitments. I was the one who negotiated with the representatives, attended the Milan Fair, bought what was needed to put in the shop. >> You did not only sell furniture built by Lenzi in the nearby factory: << Yes, he sold everything >>, says Bruno again. Pagnini, << furnished houses, but also hotels, offices, etc. Lenzi was a name known throughout Italy >>. Were you open on Sunday ?: \ u0026lt; \ u0026lt; The, afternoon my presence was fixed in shop, in the morning I went to sell the kitchens of that time, the famous "mettutti", also the trunks, in Narnali and in Galciana where we had a small warehouse: I waited for the women who came out of Mass, I contacted them one after the other >>. Were the Prato people important for the development of Quarrata ?:, << Fundamental! Having such a hard-working and generous community close by, with a great desire to work and live well, was a great fortune for Quarrata. Unfortunately today it is no longer the usual Prato >>. The shop entrusted to her was enlarged: << The fortunes of the Lenzi factory followed, which came to employ over 400 people, as well as the related industries. The shop moved to via Montalbano, where the Fattori furniture factory is now located, a significant step forward: a, just in front of it, Lenzi built the famous, "Glass Palace", the tallest and brightest building in the whole city , the largest furniture exhibition in Tuscany, now transformed into many apartments. >> But who was Nello Lenzi ?: << A big one, even if small in stature. In his youth he went to work at the SMI of Fornaci di Barga, department, rolling mill, later he began to clean the inside of the barrels, one farm after another: being small, he passed well through the small entrance door of the same. >> From the barrels to the piece of furniture was the step long ?: << The story, as the Quarratini know it, is that of a gentleman who bought a sofa, an Ottoman model, and had it brought to Quarrata. The same was seen by Nello Lenzi, he was thunderstruck, with his savings he bought an identical one, he dismantled it, all to see how it was built: thus the Lenzi furniture factory was born >>. Unfortunately, family mourning and a great fire marked the end of this imposing company. We arrive at 1974, a historic year for Bruno Pagnini and Nello: << The son Luigi moved abroad permanently, I gave life to the Casa del Mobile, a great exhibition, for some years moved to a smaller space, conducted by my son Stefano >>. Do you have any regrets ?: \ u0026lt; \ u0026lt; None, I was a lucky man in my working life. I am sorry that a figure, as important as that of Nello Lenzi, the man who made the history of Quarrata and the fortune of many, is not remembered as it should be: in this all, the administrations that have followed one another have proved unjustified absent.>