This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
WORLD DESIGN SPOTLIGHT: Frames Chair, by Hayon and Expormim
The main characters in this story are a family furniture firm from Moixent (Valencia) which began life as an exporter of wickerwork in the nineteen-sixties and a National Award-winning designer with a whole realm of imagery in his head. It is the story of Expormim, Jaime Hayon and the Frames chair, or how craftsmanship and tradition joined forces with the magical narrative of design.
Expormim opened its factory in 1960 in the hometown of its founder, Miguel Laso Tortosa, who decided to embark on the business of producing products made from natural materials, taking industrialization to this small town in the south of the province of Valencia, until then a mainly agricultural area.
The original raw material, osier, came from Cuenca and it was processed and worked by hand in Moixent to make products that would subsequently be exported to Europe in the form of cradles, trays and baskets. More than 60 years and several generations later, innovation and creativity are still the mainstay of the company.
Composed of a series of designs that proudly reclaim rattan, the Frames collection was launched by Expormim and Jaime Hayon at the Milan International Furniture Fair in 2014.
A chance encounter with the renowned architects-designers Oscar Tusquets and Benedetta Tagliabue would mark a turning point in the evolution of the business. This meeting led to a series of professional collaborations that would place the company on the design map without ever abandoning that tandem of craftsmanship and passion that had worked so well for them.
Expormim has always trusted the know-how of craftsmen and women who have transmitted their knowledge from one generation to the next. Whether in the curve of the rattan, or the sanding of wood by hand or the joining of all the components: everything is done by skilled artisans who have acquired deep knowledge and broad experience over the course of the years.
That union of craftsmanship and design led to a successful collaboration between Jaime Hayon and Expormim, who launched the Frames collection on the occasion of the International Furniture Fair of Milan in 2014, comprising a series of designs that vindicate rattan, which forms the skeleton of the pieces, considered a radically modern material but worked in the most artisanal manner.
The collection, touched with Hayon's magic wand, is on its way to becoming a modern classic thanks to that mix of rusticity and distinction, with a simple but very elegant aesthetic.
The collection, touched by the magic wand of Hayon, is on its way to becoming a modern classic thanks to that mix of rusticity and distinction, with simple but very elegant aesthetics, where the design of those pieces of outdoor furniture is perfectly suitable for indoor use, and where what was once only for summer can now be enjoyed all year round.
Hayon, prestigious designer-artist-illustrator, winner of the National Design Award in 2021, enjoys creating in his studio, located in Valencia, from where he gives light to everything he creates.
Frames takes up once more the story of the perfect union between craftsmanship and tradition, but passing through the Hayon filter, which paints it with joy and modernity. The Frames chair was rewarded in 2016 with a prize for Excellent Product Design at the prestigious German Design Awards.