Dezeen promotion: Spanish designer Jaime Hayon has added a series of chairs to his rattan furniture collection Frames.
Hayon has added a dining chair, dining armchair and low armchair to the range he designed for Spanish brand Expormim, which specialises in wicker furniture.
The new pieces were launched at this year's Salone del Mobile furniture fair, which took place from 17 to 22 April 2018 as part of Milan design week.
The chairs are handcrafted entirely from rattan. The main structure of each chair is shaped by two curving frames of the palm-stem material. These support a plaited Viennese wicker made from peeled and tinted rattan, which forms the seat and backrest.
According to Expormim, the furniture is designed to suit "small and coquettish" spaces, both indoor and outdoor.
"Thanks to its charm – a mélange of rusticity and temperate elegance – and to its plain but sophisticated aesthetics, the collection is poised to become a contemporary classic," said the firm.
The rattan material is finished with three coatings: a dye, a base coat and a top coat. This finish includes a UV filter, making the material resistant to sun damage.
The chairs are available in 11 different colours, including Japanese Red, Forest Green and Navy Blue.
Seat cushions are also available to accompany the chairs, with a choice of upholstery in natural or faux leather, virgin wool fabrics from Dolce Crevin and Kvadrat, velvet or polypropylene.
Expormim was founded in Mogente, near Valencia, in 1960, with the goal to export wicker furniture around the world. Its name is an abbreviation of its title La Exportadora del Mimbre, which translates as "the wicker exporter".
The brand has collaborated with several well-known designers on projects, with recent examples including a pair of "male and female" chairs by Spanish studio MUT Design.
The collaboration with Jaime Hayon began in 2012, when the designer came across the brand's stand at a trade fair in Valencia.
"He was fascinated by this material, rattan, and this is how everything started," explained Alberto Ales, manager of Expormim's design department.
"Jaime liked the naturalness of the material, the rational use of it, its lightness, comfort, and how it appeared to be really modern at the same time."
Two years later, in 2014, the brand released the first designs in the Frames series. The other items in the range are a room divider, a footstool and a coffee table.
Jaime Hayon now has a wide range of designs in his repertoire, including fashion, furniture, interiors and architecture. He recently teamed up with British designer Jasper Morrison to launch a new menswear brand called Jijibaba, and constructed a pop-up pavilion at the Stockholm Furniture Fair in 2017.
A retrospective exhibition of his work was held in Madrid, his home city, earlier this year.