Lounge Collection
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Issue 12
Welcome to the 2025 edition of Details. Following a historic start to the year with Boss Design joining Okamura, a global leader in ergonomic, precision engineered and sustainably designed workplace solutions. We look forward to an exciting year of growth and product launches.
With sustainability and creativity continuing to be at the core of everything we do – we reveal our new collections, the Uma chair, one of the first of many products to incorporate BioPUR® – a material that reduces carbon footprint by 75%. This year also sees the launch of the Brooke table range and Mila lounge, a luxurious soft seating range.
We look forward to seeing you throughout the year.
Editor Natalie Murray
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Sculptural Ceramics
An exhibition featuring the works of Tim Martin and Enrico Donadello.
Boss hosted an exhibition featuring the work of renowned ceramic artists Enrico Donadello and Tim Martin during Clerkenwell Design Week in London.
Boss have had the privilege of working with Enrico Donadello on several creative campaigns and more recently with Tim Martin with his sculptural pieces featuring in new images for Beau, Brooke and Uma collections. We talk to both artists about their careers and the inspirations behind their work.
Q&A Tim Martin
Tim Martin is a London based sculptor. His hand-built ceramics contrast elegant forms with a brutalist style, the culmination of 30 years working in the architecture industry and 10 years being a professional ceramist. He discusses his work and artistic life.
After 30 years working as an architect in Sydney, New York and Los Angeles, he decided to build up a professional art practice in London. He studied a 2 year Diploma of Ceramics, and now has a studio at Cockpit Arts in Bloomsbury. He has participated in residencies in Denmark and Hungary, and has shown in solo and group exhibitions in Europe and Australia, as well as within the UK. He is the author of several articles on topics such as ceramics, art residencies, and notable ceramic collections.
How does your architectural background feed into your work?
Architecture practice is not just design and project management: it’s knowing and working with combinations of countless materials - many of them pretty earthy, like wood, metals, brick, concrete - and combining them through a host of processes to create something new, sometimes surprising and innovative. I guess ceramics has that same materiality, and often a need for many processes. It involves a kind of basic but nuanced knowledge of how to use water, heat, dryness, expansion, shrinkage, and all the technology that comes with mixing clays and glazes, making molds, and building structures. My sculptures often explore structural concepts such as balance and scale, weight and lightness, movement and stillness. In addition, I’m drawn to minimalist and graphic expression.
What are you aiming for in your work?
I’m striving for a calmness in my ceramics, where pieces can work in with interiors and homes, but still have their own presence. Assemblages and tableaux allow me to tell a larger story, such as travels and impressions of new countries and cities, landscapes and groups of figures, or just distinct moments in my life.
Basically, I aim to distil simple, evocative themes - a stand of trees, the figure, plants and corals, the built environment - and sculpt forms that are barely recognizable but are hopefully embodied with a powerful emotional presence.
What’s the attraction to clay?
I truly like getting dirty! And I like using interesting clays that fire with interesting effects. I’ve done quite a lot of wood firings which are an experience in themselves as well as producing often funky results.
I use a combination of unglazed clay, rich slip glazes, and bright metallic oxides, so my work can be pretty varied: not a lot of time to get bored.
You’ve spent a lot of time at ceramic residencies: what are these, and what do you get from them?
Residencies are dotted around the world, and are where you disappear for a few months and do nothing but ceramics. They’re there to focus your mind on a project or a commission, or just new directions in your art practice. Often there are workshops or symposiums. Mostly, they are communities where whoever is there share valuable ideas and techniques with each other.
I love my time at these places. I’ve spent immersive time at Guldagergaard in Denmark, the International Ceramic Studio (ICS) in Hungary, and I’m soon to be in Jingdezen, the porcelain capital of China. When I return to ICS this July, I’ll be able to culminate my stay with a solo show, and participate in their annual international symposium.
What’s your studio like and how does it influence your work?
I have a studio at Cockpit Arts in Bloomsbury, London. It’s a collective of around 100 professional makers ranging from textile artists to metal and wood workers. It’s fascinating being with artists who are expert in a vast number of processes, and who channel art-based ideas from every material you can think of. So I get a lot from this environment and this company. And it’s central London, so there’s an instant city life right outside my doorstep. I feel that elusive work-life balance is achievable being here.
Ceramics has totally taken off in people’s imagination in recent years… why do you think that is?
I think it’s a direct response to the relentless digital world we’re living in. We have a need to get back to simpler things, and maybe use our body and hands more than just typing on keyboards or phones. There’s also a fear of losing culturalrelated things like craftsmanship, ancient technologies and processes, and nonmanufactured objects.
Maybe we want to relax and focus more, and be more present with the stuff we do in our lives.
For commissions and enquiries please contact: tim@timmartindesign.com Instagram @timmartinworkshop @cockpitstudios timmartinworkshop.com
Q&A Enrico Donadello
Please tell us a little bit about your background?
I began my career studying painting at The Fine Arts Academy in Venice. I then went on to work in a photographer’s studio as an assistant - it was there that I discovered my initial passion for styling and set design.
Photography at the studio was very technical, and I quickly grew tired of cables, lenses and digital backs. That’s how I jumped from being a photographer’s assistant to design and style the sets. I found that thinking about the spaces, colors and the stories behind the objects was much closer to who I was.
When did your passion for ceramics begin?
I moved to London and began working with the stylists at Elle Decoration and it’s there that I met the renowned interior stylist Sania Pell. Her passion for ceramics was quite an inspiration to me. She knew many artists and had several beautiful pieces in her home.
I’ve always been pretty handy, so around 2020 when I was still living in Milan, I wanted to go back to some crafty activity, however I wanted it to be something a bit more methodical than painting. I was considering ceramics and then the pandemic happened and all of a sudden everything shut down. So I then I went to Nove, a renowned ceramic district near my hometown and it was there that I bought my first block of clay.
I would say that from there it grew quite organically. With practice I developed skills, and I took some lessons from artists I admired to learn how to approach glazes and get other technical notions.
Please tell us a little bit about your creative process?
I create my stoneware objects from my studio in Italy. I take inspiration from sculpture, architecture, traditional craft and tactile texture. In my work, I strive to evoke both the familiar and the unexpected by combining geometrical constructions to ancestral forms. The pieces are built using different techniques. I take the time to observe how they develop and often the shape changes and evolves as the object grows. Colors are also a big part of my work as they get mixed and layered in an obsessive search of the perfect shade.
For commissions and enquiries please contact: donadello.enrico@gmail.com Instagram @enricodonadello and @enrico_dnl www.enricodonadello.com
Photo credits: Portrait by Mattia Savio / Ceramic Photography by slowphoto.studio
Uma
Elevated Executive
We set out to evolve the Paloma collection for boardroom spaces but came up with something that offers so much more, explains Uma’s designer, Aaron Clarkson.
Details
Since its launch in 2019, Paloma has been one of the most popular chairs in the Boss Design portfolio – a bestseller, year in, year out. The simplicity of the form, its gentle, organic lines and overall level of comfort make it easy to specify in a variety of settings, from the work place through to luxe hospitality lounges. As its designer, that’s very gratifying.
But the popularity of this chair has brought a new challenge. Customers frequently request a version of Paloma with a high back for their boardrooms. Although you might think the answer would be to attach a taller back to the existing seat and base, that would throw its form out of balance. So, with Uma we aimed to create a new and original meeting chair based on Paloma’s design language.
Back to the drawing board
Essentially , I started with a concept, drawing boardroom chairs that would share Paloma’s sweeping curves but in a new luxurious form to suit the executive setting. Nothing was ruled out, and explored versions with metal arms, but eventually gravitated back to a singular form for a sculpted look, coherent with Paloma and its sister products such as Amelia and Remi.
Sustainability is always woven into our design process, and our decision to manufacture the back and sides in a single component is an example of this. It also enabled us to apply the expertise
we’ve built up over many years using molded foam. As with Remi, Uma’s cushioning is made from Bio-PUR® – a more sustainable type of PU foam that uses no petrochemicals in its products, with a carbon footprint 75% lower than standard alternatives.
From sketches we went into CAD modeling, and following our iterative design process began building prototypes, considering and refining each shape, surface and line, conscious all the while of how Uma would be upholstered. Every detail was carefully honed as we progressed towards Uma’s enigmatic form. The arms and back are lithe, sleek, almost blade-like, belying its generous proportions and the next-level comfort of its sit.
Luxury level comfort
While chairs in this category are typically very firm, we’ve taken a super-soft approach made possible by innovative techniques and materials in the cushioning. When you sit into Uma, the back has a beautiful shape that flows with the spine, and where your lower back touches the chair we’ve inset a panel of softer foam to augment the comfort.
The seat is wider than Paloma’s, and the cushioning is much thicker than the back and arms suggest. Hollowing out its plywood base a little has afforded us an extra 0.6” (15mm) of foam. Further innovation has gone into the molding of the seat and back component, with felt used to stiffen the foam at its edges while the middle remains soft and comfortable. That stiffness means Uma maintains its structure and enables our upholsterers to conceal the seams precisely along the perimeter of its form.
“With Uma, we set out to evolve Paloma’s signature language—those sweeping and organic curves. The result is a chair that feels sculptural yet soft, seamlessly connected to our family of designs like Remi and Amelia.”
Details
Uma will look elegantly poised in the boardrooms of serious corporations. But its personality can be softened through color and texture fabric so it can also serve as an everyday work chair when paired with tables or desking. For informal meeting, breakout or touchdown spaces, it can be specified more playfully with patterned fabrics or a two-tone look, with the outer and inner panels in different colors.
Portfolio
Regal yet flexible
While developing the Uma concept, now and then I would think of it as a throne – something that represents leadership, authority and even royalty. However, along with a smooth, sculpted look and feel, with Uma we’ve managed to preserve another of Paloma’s key attributes: its versatility. This is a design that easily adapts to a variety of applications.
Available on either a four- or five-star base, Uma has a swivel, with height adjustment and a lockable tilt mechanism. Wherever it travels, Uma’s next-level comfort goes with it and no matter how long the meeting, it’s not the chair that makes people shift in their seats.
Looking at the bigger picture, Uma adds a unique new piece to our range, with soft, organic lines to complement the likes of Remi, Amelia and Paloma. Here in the studio, we’ve talked about 3D printing a chess set where each piece from pawn to queen is a different chair from the portfolio. If we did, I think Uma would be the perfect king – a comfortable throne for the executive boardroom, or a grand addition to a variety of other settings.
Brooke Curve Appeal
Discussion. Sharing ideas. Collective decisions. From ancient legend to modern business, the round table has been a metaphor for all these things. Now, a new round table is joining the Boss Design range with an elegant, timeless aesthetic that suits both modern work environments and high-end hospitality spaces.
The inspiration behind Brooke is a simple one. A circle, nature’s perfect form, is not just the tabletop but is repeated in the tapering cone-shaped base that supports the surface. Comfortable, inviting, unobtrusive – it’s a form that welcomes you to the discussion, facilitating natural eye contact with everyone seated at the table.
Portfolio
Brooke’s rounded, graphic silhouette is so adaptable it will complement a variety of meeting, task and executive seating. Oval and oblong tabletop options bring the design into the boardroom space, where its curves suite in perfectly with Uma, our luxurious new executive chair.
A steel plate at the base of the cone gives it stability to match its well-grounded yet unobtrusive looks. No legs, frame or corners mean there’s no clash with chairs or limbs, but there is plenty of room for feet under the table. Inside the pressed plywood cone, a central steel tube and top plate support a surface that can be specified in a range of materials. Power units and data cables are concealed in the cone, keeping things tidy and adding to the versatility of the design across meeting, collaborative and boardroom spaces.
With a shorter base, Brooke becomes a coffee table, effortlessly transitioning into breakout, waiting and hospitality areas. Lacquered or stained, the plywood cone brings wood grain textures into the setting for a natural feel. Or the base can be upholstered to suite in with modular sofas like Beau or Atom. Specified at two different heights and arranged in a waterfall or caterpillar configuration, overlapping coffee tables can become a fascinating focal point in a hospitality landscape.
If Brooke’s gentle, rounded form appeals to the eye, its detail and finishing are of next-level quality. The surface is available in a standard range of materials including laminate, veneer and Fenix. Alternatively, it can be specified in stone, ceramic or recycled waste plastic. The table’s character can be fine-tuned even further with a squared, reverse chamfer or bull-nose edge. And because the cone is constructed from two half cones drawn together, a slight bevel where they meet creates an interesting witness line – another subtle detail to discover when you experience Brooke close-up.
Shipping, assembly and maintenance are made simple with straightforward Allen key fixings. This simplifies disassembly – whether for refurbishment or for end-of-life recycling. The plywood we use is 100% recyclable, as are Brooke’s steel components.
Sustainably Crafted
How Boss Design’s new Carbon Efficiency Labels provide a clearer view of the carbon impact of our furniture.
Insights
Across manufacturing, there has been a drive to reduce the carbon footprint of products – not just furniture, but cars, televisions, refrigerators… you name it. At Boss, our policy is always to be transparent with our customers, and we currently include an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) with each piece of furniture we make.
An EPD is great. It tells you the carbon footprint of the product, the percentage of recycled materials within it, and the percentage of its materials that can be recycled.
However, an EPD only gives you a snapshot of the product’s carbon impact taken at the time the furniture ships. For example – one task chair might have a carbon footprint of 75kg CO2e and last for five years before it needs to be replaced, while another task chair might also have a carbon footprint of 75kg CO2e but is built to last 10 years.
Clearly, any organization that’s serious about the long-term sustainability of its operations needs more than an EPD in order to make informed purchase decisions.
Our new Carbon Efficiency Ratings
To address this, we’ve engaged with Design Conformity, an organization that specializes in the environmental certification of furniture design and manufacturing. Design Conformity applies a method called Product Carbon Footprint Assessment to arrive at a Circular Design Certificate. And within this certificate you’ll find a Carbon Efficiency Rating for the furniture.
The tag is very relatable – it looks just like the A to G energy labels used for appliances. But the important thing is that it gives the buyer a lot more information than an EPD. The Carbon Efficiency Rating is calculated using its carbon footprint in kg CO2e, the space it takes up in square feet, and how long it will last in its first life.
For products designed and manufactured with refurbishment in mind, thus avoiding landfill after their first life, the label states a second Carbon Efficiency Rating for second life. In addition, it states the percentage of recycled content, the percentage of the product designed for disassembly, and the percentage of the product that can be reused.
Using our example of the two 75kg CO2e chairs – the second one, with twice the expected life cycle, would be much more carbon efficient, which would be reflected in its rating.
A new way of looking at carbon
As a furniture manufacturer that has always focused on outstanding design, excellent materials and great build quality, the Carbon Efficiency Rating enables us to give our customers much more clarity regarding the overall carbon impact of their purchases.
While we already follow a design framework that considers a wide range of environmental factors, working with Design Conformity will enable us to apply a more systematic approach, focused on reducing embodied carbon in the materials, the deconstruct-ability of each piece, and designing for reuse. Meanwhile, the robust certification process holds us to account across sourcing, the processing of materials, manufacturing processes, energy consumption, distribution and the product’s impact at end-of-life.
By factoring in the space furniture occupies and its longevity, we can start to appreciate it as a carbon asset as much as a business asset. While the monetary value of a chair or sofa might be written off over a few years, a well-made piece from the Boss catalogue might well serve your business for 10 years or more, receive a refurbishment and continue to be a valuable carbon asset for another 10 years in its second life.
The idea of carbon asset management represents a paradigm shift that might even change the future of business accounting.
But for now it’s certainly an important new approach for organizations that want to embed sustainability and carbon reduction throughout their operations.
Third party certified by Design Conformity, Carbon Efficiency Ratings are compliant with the ISO14067 standard and GHG Protocol’s Scope 3 emissions reporting. Design Conformity is an approved EcoVadis Trading Partner with Gold accreditation.
Mila
Sometimes you don’t need to start from scratch to create great furniture. Designer Aaron Clarkson looks at the ideas that led to Mila, our latest seating range.
As a designer, I love looking at other designers’ sketchbooks. It’s fascinating to see the different concepts they tested along the way towards a finished piece of furniture, how ideas are developed, how the product evolves, which features survive the process, and which are left to one side.
It’s also interesting to find out what happens to the elements of a design which, for one reason or another, don’t see the light of day. Are they lost forever? Or do we go back to these ideas and apply them in future creations?
Our new Mila line demonstrates how individual concepts from different design projects can be brought together and improved upon to create something new and original, with its own distinctive character – including ideas put to one side in the past.
The story begins with one of those discarded ideas I’ve just referred to. When we were designing the Frida lounge and work booth we made two prototypes. Both had a back section consisting of a foam-padded plywood screen, one with a seat section going all the way down to the floor while the other had a slimmer sling seat with space underneath it.
Mindful Modularity
It was a close call, but we went with the sling design, which led to the award -winning Frida booth. However, the box seat version stayed with me. There’s something very appealing about seating with deep cushioning and a solidlooking, grounded base. The approach has been successful in other designs I’ve developed including the lounge chair Remi and Beau, our super-sized modular sofa range – both products that epitomize comfort and luxury.
It led me to wonder whether the luxuriously ample seat section we developed for Beau could be combined with Frida’s wraparound screen, with its secure, cocoon-like cosiness. And, how might we unify the overspilling decadence of that seat with a refined, slimline back section?
The answer lay in yet another successful Boss product – Bodie. Customers love the domestic vibe of this sofa’s loose cushions, which make the sitter feel right at home. Cushions like these could be the perfect segue between the soft seat and defined surround.
Three special ingredients
Combining Frida’s back, Beau’s seat and Bodie’s cushions was almost like baking a cake – putting together three special ingredients to create something with its own delicious flavor. It wasn’t a traditional product development process; it came about through recognizing the strengths of each element and exploring how we could capitalize on them.
This time, we weren’t starting from scratch but the shapes of seat, back and cushions would require adjustment and refinement to make sure Mila would be beautiful, comfortable and unique in its own right. We designed and prototyped a generous two-seat sofa with a low back, an armchair and high-back armchair.
Portfolio
The high-back single-seater is a particularly interesting piece, offering outstanding comfort with a lovely sense of privacy.
Mila’s seat replicates and augments our learnings from Beau. Layered cut foam forms a soft dome over a new serpentine spring configuration, within its plywood frame. Its top surface is angled five degrees down to bring the sitter into the pillowy cushions so they can sit back and appreciate the comfort. Filled with soft fiber, the cushions are zipped to the back, which holds them in place while making it possible to remove the covers for cleaning.
The arms and back are extremely supportive of the soft center formed by the seat and cushions. Thin in form, a layer of foam softens the surface of the surround, providing visual and acoustic privacy in the high-back chair model. Throughout the upholstery, every seam has been carefully considered, from the detailing on the cushions to the stitching on the seat, which is positioned to avoid both wear and dust accumulation.
Accumulative effect
Reconfiguring three successful design ideas to create a new seating range has resulted in something interior designers and architects will have fun with. There are some interesting juxtapositions within the product itself. The defined form of
the seat transitions to the more homely, undefined form of the cushions, which transition again to the defined form of the back and arms as they wrap their way around the seat section.
Designed for hospitality environments, Mila seating can be specified in a single fabric to create a sense of unity. Equally, it looks great with the surround upholstered in leather and the inner sections covered in textiles. Different pattern and color combinations offer near-infinite possibilities.
The three pieces in the range can be configured to create interesting landscapes. The straight back and sides facilitate side-by-side and back-to-back positioning without head clash, and I can imagine low-backed chairs and sofas combined in sequences with their high-backed counterpart to create visual interest across a setting. Although Mila has a structured, architectural feel, its soft curves mean it suites in well with the organic lines of our Remi and Amelia chairs.
Mila goes to show that sometimes an unused idea can sit in a designer’s sketchbook for a while, percolating, just waiting for its potential to be unlocked. Here, I think we’ve managed to create a seating system that has its own individual qualities, using elements and learnings from some of the best designs we’ve created in recent years. Patience leads to success.
Celebrating Circularity
Made from fabric offcuts and roll-ends, the Boss tote bag isn’t just sustainable, it’s also a thing of beauty.
What’s the most popular swag at industry events? Well, it just could be the Boss Bag. Ever since we started making totes in-house from furniture fabric offcuts, our bags have been in high demand – and they’re more sustainable than those made by most merchandising companies.
Whenever we fulfill a soft seating order, we keep the leftover fabric. Rather than sending it to waste or recycling, it’s turned into an attractive, durable tote bag by our machinists. The design, materials and skills are all in-house, and each item is made with the same precision and consideration as the furniture we manufacture.
“The Boss Bag has been met with an overwhelmingly positive response, particularly at events like NeoCon and Clerkenwell,” says Rob Miles, marketing executive at Boss Design. “Hundreds of customers, designers and architects seem genuinely excited to take home our unique memento. The rich textures and quality stitching really set them apart.”
People love the idea that each bag has a story behind it. Perhaps the fabric came from an item they’ve seen in the Boss showroom, or maybe from luxury seating specified by one of our high-end clients. Stylish and functional, the bags have a unique connection with what we do and what we stand for.
“When I look at a sofa, every seam has to be in the right place and every stitch has to be perfect. It’s the same when we sew the tote bags at the end of a job –we aim to get it right every time because although it’s just a tote bag, it’s also a reflection of how we work here at the factory,” says Tina, Seamstress at Boss Design North America.
Not only does this approach minimize waste but it removes the carbon impact and cost of having our tote bags manufactured overseas using untraceable textiles, then shipped to the UK or US. We’re able to apply a higher standard of quality control and the use of offcuts gives each bag its own distinctive charm along with a story that ties in with Boss Design’s commitment to sustainability.
As well as distributing Boss Bags at industry events, we also present them to customers when we celebrate the completion of a successful order –tokens of appreciation that capture the quality and effort that goes into every job.
