Baxter Lands At Space

Italy’s Finest Leather Maestro Comes To Space Furniture

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Launched in a city near Lake Como, Italy in January 1990, Baxter is the combination of experience and passion, a sense for business, a desire not to follow the rules, and the spirit and feeling evoked by the Made in Italy philosophy. Describing Baxter as “the story of encounters, ideas, but above all of people”, founders Luigi Bestetti and his nephew Paolo Paola began their journey towards the contemporary by pursuing free expression.

Baxter draws from the long tradition of Italian leather production. Their first sofa was made from a unique Brianza leather considered too thick by the tanneries. It was this challenge that created the prototype for the first design called Alfred, a Chesterstyle sofa where the feel and comfort of thick leather is its defining feature. Their discovery inside a tiny tannery in regional Italy would become the alchemy for every collection since. “So, the tannery turns into an alchemist’s lab: you try, you experiment, sometimes you are wrong, but then you start again,” remarks Luigi Bestetti. “From that moment we would study the full potential of materials which have become the core of Baxter’s research”.