Cab 413 leather armchair

The iconic chair by Mario Bellini

Cab is the world’s first free-standing cowhide chair, informed by the relationship between the human skeleton and the skin. Comfortable and welcoming, it embodies Cassina’s superior artisan skills and attention to detail.

"This was a new kind of chair, constructed totally out of leather, much cloned since then.” Thus Mario Bellini describes Cab, a best-seller that he designed in the 1970s, which is now a signature piece in Cassina’s I Contemporanei collection. Cab was the first-ever chair to feature a free-standing leather structure, inspired by how our skin fits over our skeleton. The upholstery consists of sixteen pieces of saddle leather. Individually die-cut, they then undergo fourteen discrete procedures, again by hand. The pieces are sewn together only when their outer edges have been trimmed to ensure a perfect fit. Once assembled, the cover is attached to the chair’s steel skeleton and held in place by means of a zipper fastening, as in a bespoke tailored garment. The wide array of colours for the saddle leather cushion is now complemented by pigmented saddle leather in black, brown and Russian red.

The upholstery is made up of 22 parts in cowhide, die-cut and hand-processed one-by-one and then sewn into a single piece which is then fitted to a steel skeleton and closed with a zipper, like a custom-tailored garment.

Cassina introduces the original model with a more slanted backrest and thicker padding – for greater comfort – and with structure in natural oak or oak with stained black finish, along with the natural cherry of the historic version.