Pine, webbing and a sliding door
In about 1940, Porset and Guerrero submitted a furnishing proposal to MoMA’s Latin American Competition for Organic Design in Home Furnishings. It became the basis for furniture developed for farming families in Coyoacán, Mexico, in 1947.3
The materials have specific jobs. Pine forms the furniture; ixtle, a plant fibre available in Mexico, makes the webbing of the cot and chair. Jute screens the wall case’s sliding doors and end.3
That last detail is easy to miss. A cupboard front need not be another solid board: woven screening can fill the opening within its frame. The proposal makes you look for where solidity is needed and where a stretched or woven surface can do the work. Sleeping, sitting and storing call for different answers, even within one room.
The curve that receives the body
Porset was born in Cuba and worked in Mexico. Her furniture drew on forms already familiar there, including the butaque: a low chair with a reclining back. She designed versions of this established type.21
MoMA’s example, dated about 1957, combines laminated wood with wicker. The frame carries a curved woven surface that continues from seat to back. Follow that line and the design becomes easy to understand: the wood holds the outline while the wicker fills the space against the body.1
Set beside the earlier furnishing proposal, the chair makes a useful connection. Weaving can support a resting person or close a cupboard. Its role changes with its position, tension and frame. Familiar materials leave plenty for a designer to decide.
The second name on the drawing
Porset’s contribution was missing from the competition entry’s original credit. MoMA now names her alongside Guerrero.3
The correction matters to this particular project. A proposal about ordinary domestic life emerged from a collaboration, yet the record initially made one contributor disappear. Keeping both names beside the drawing restores a part of the work that the pine and weaving cannot tell us on their own.
The room is memorable for the care given to modest tasks: a body resting on webbing, possessions behind a sliding screen. Those everyday needs deserve deliberate design, whoever the room is for.