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Description of Summertime

Producer: Gufram
Product name: Summertime
Designer: Valerio Berruti
Product Classification: sofa
Usage: indoors, can also be used outdoors
Material: Poliurethane foam with orange and cinnamon flavoured washable paint Guflac® Plus
Weight: about 25 Kg.
Dimesions: cm 170 x 86 x 76
Available colous: two versions
optical white / copper green / tobacco
optical white / burnt sienna / brick red
Introductory text by: Gianlugi Ricuperati
Limited Edition: 250 pieces each version

Motto: Summertime, and the living is easy

Gufram — a company that represents a big trademark in the history of Italian design, andwhose "pop" pieces from its historical catalogue (the couch Bocca, Pratone, and the mythical cactus-shaped hall-tree) are kept in the world's most important museums — renovates its new Multiples collection after the takeover at the beginning of 2012.

In order to follow with congruence the historical path of contamination between the serial worldof the interior design industry and art's creative inspiration, Gufram presents a new Multiple atthe Salone del Mobile 2013 in Milan; its author is the artist Valerio Berruti.

The result of this encounter between design and art is a sofa of ample and deep seating space, ideal for seating three people, and bearing the signs, the codes and the branding of Valerio Berruti's painting.The name of this multiple produced in 250 numbered pieces each version is Summertime –which evokes the title of one of the most famous songs by George Gershwin.The first verse of the introductory text for Gufram and Valerio Berruti becomes the subtitle of thepiece "... and living it easy", thus creating a pun with the term "living", which is not stressed, as it happens, on the other hand, in the text of the song: "living" in English, as used to indicate the living room — the couch.

The sofa Sumertime – produced entirely in Italy – uses polyurethane foam (a material common to all Gufram Multiples), water based paint and wax crayons, which are then varnished and fixed with the washable Guflac® Plus paint; this, besides keeping the colours vivid through time, releases a natural delicate cinnamon and orange aroma.

Thus Summertime wishes to be an instrument of delightful idleness; an invitation to the comfortable relax of the first summer days – those that still carry the scent of budding flowers; those that let us enjoy the first tepid sunny days; those of the first swims in the sea; those of the first ice-cream cones.

The introductory text by Pierluigi Ricuperati is a poem that well describes the context. Here is an excerpt:

“The only thing left, under my legs, was Valerio Berruti’s sofa, clear-cut and comforting — tempting promise, formed and forming substance, cinnamon, orange and mounting summer — and, as if by magic, a new music started in my ears — a second dream. And it was Gershwin’s turn, Summertime / livin’ is easy; Cathy Berberian’s voice waving and pushing the high notes in an early sunny afternoon. Then the sofa became a life-buoy, like a small rubber offshore barge: like those made for boys a little older – those able to swim, while for me it was only an opportunity to rest, exhausted, wasted by the hundred-meter absent-style swim till there – the beach.”