The Abbraccio Story

It began with a chair.

More precisely, it began with a conversation on a terrace in Portofino, late in the afternoon of August 2024, between Luca Ferrara and a friend who had just asked him the simplest question: what kind of furniture do you wish existed?

Ferrara — a Milan-based designer known for his work with boutique Italian hotels — looked at the old olive tree at the edge of the terrace, the way its branches curved toward the sea. He picked up a pencil.

I wanted to make furniture that felt like it was reaching for you. Not rigid. Not formal. Something that opens its arms and says: sit, stay, breathe.

The Abbraccio Lounge Chair was sketched on the back of a menu that evening. The curves came from the olive tree. The soft, enveloping seat came from what Ferrara called the quality of a Tuesday dinner — the easy kind, where everyone stays too long and no one notices.

From that single chair, an entire outdoor world emerged.

Sofas that hold two people the way the evening holds the last hour of light. Dining chairs with a small leather strap detail — a nod to Ferrara’s grandfather, a saddle maker in Arezzo. A rocking chair for the morning coffee no one wants to rush. A sun lounger for the afternoons you want to stretch into forever.

Every piece shares the same design DNA: solid Grade-A teak, shaped into sweeping curves, paired with thick cream performance bouclé. Every joint is hand-finished. Every curve is structural, not decorative.

The name came last. Ferrara tested a dozen — all of them too precious, too clever. Then his partner, reading his notes in the studio, underlined one word she found in a margin: abbraccio.

The Italian word for embrace.

And that is exactly what this collection does.