Large Rare Petalas Table

This rare and large Peta­las table was designed by Jorge Zalzupin in 1959 at his stu­dio called L’Ate­lier in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The struc­tures of origa­mi fold­ing tech­niques served as the inspi­ra­tion for this table, just like Zal­szupin’s design for the Andor­in­ha table. To man­u­fac­ture these tables, lay­ers of Brazil­ian Jacaran­da wood (a type of rose­wood) were pressed into molds while heated.

The present table con­sists of eight petals, which are fixed on a met­al frame, form­ing an octag­o­nal shape. There was also a small­er square ver­sion made of four petals. An inter­est­ing aspect is that Zal­szupin designed the Peta­las series to uti­lize the valu­able wood left over from the pro­duc­tion of the Andor­in­ha table for this new Peta­las table design. What a sus­tain­able idea!

This rare ear­ly large ver­sion stands out from sim­i­lar tables due to its warm and beau­ti­ful veneer of Jacaran­da wood. Par­tic­u­lar­ly intrigu­ing is the sym­met­ri­cal bright star adorn­ing the cen­ter of the table, cre­at­ed by the dou­ble reflec­tion of the veneers on each indi­vid­ual petal. 

In a stun­ning orig­i­nal con­di­tion, signed labels can be found on the underside.

Jorge Zal­szupin (June 1, 1922 – August 17, 2020) was a Pol­ish-Brazil­ian archi­tect and design­er, wide­ly regard­ed as one of the most sig­nif­i­cant Brazil­ian design­ers of the 20^th century.