6 Surrealist Chairs from #ObjectsOfDesire

Italian architect and designer's iconic foam chair 'La Mamma' represents a female figure with a ball, symbolising the weight of centuries of male prejudice where he saw women as prisoners. Despite initially looking curvy and comfy, the act of sitting in this chair makes a statement.

Once you're tired of seeing the large eye, this sculpture can be turned over into a sofa. Man Ray designed this as part of the 1971 'Ultramobile' furniture collection with other Surrealist artists, and this seat-sculpture is a ‘presence that pulsates and breathes in your home’.

Saunders’ furniture-based sculptures have a ghostly presence - their melting, bulging forms seem to suggest unpredictable forces at play. Her work is inspired by second-hand domestic furniture due of its place in family, and she often introduces comical and challenging narratives to her sculptures.

Named after the fragile character of Blanche DuBois from Tennessee Williams’ play 'A Streetcar Named Desire', this chair conveys Blanche’s unstable sense of reality in a tragic story shot through with beauty and delusion, seduction and violence.

Alongside Ron Arad and other designers, Danny Lane broke new ground by creating furniture from overlooked industrial materials. His anarchic process of ‘bricolage’ often uses broken glass to make dynamic, irregular forms.

This dream-like chair is named after the child’s game of Cat’s Cradle, played with looped string between the fingers. Salvador Dalí designed this chair with art collector Edward James, who was fascinated by the ‘Dance of the Hands’ performed by Tilly Losch (his wife at the time) and Hedy Pfundmayer.