You've found the piece. Now the project.
Trade terms for professionals and design studios
Start from the inside, because that is how Mascheroni describes it. It begins with a load-bearing frame in solid wood. Over the frame goes non-deformable foam rubber, and around the foam a wrap of Dacron. Only then the hide. Four layers, in that order, and three of them disappear the day the chair is closed. It is an unusual way to introduce a high-back executive chair, and a candid one: the part you will look at for years carries nothing, and the parts that carry everything are never seen.
The fourth layer is the one you choose. Mascheroni upholsters the Congress in natural bovine leather only, drawn from the whole of its Mascheroni Leather Colour System. Under the seat the chair swivels, tilts and adjusts in height, on a five-star base in wood or steel. In a director's office that base is all a visitor sees of the chair below desk level, so it deserves the same thought as the desk itself.
The same build runs through the family. Take it by height, tallest first: the 135; the Congress 127, a second presidential chair with a shorter back; the Congress Conference, lower again, for the meeting table; and last the Congress V, a fixed visitor chair on front feet and rear castors. La Mercanti walks the client through the four layers before the colour comes up, since the first three are the ones nobody will see again.
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Mascheroni does, piece by piece. The company states that the finished product goes through a meticulous functional test and a thorough analysis of its aesthetic conformity, judged against the original design. On a chair that swivels, tilts and rises, function is something that can be tried, and the maker tries it on the completed chair. For a buyer the useful point is where the inspection sits: at the very end, on the finished product.
Mostly from Europe. For the leathers it describes, Mascheroni gives the raw material as bovine hides of predominantly European origin, and for its vegetable-tanned leather simply as European. The Congress is offered in all the natural bovine leathers of the Mascheroni Leather Colour System.
Reach for an absorbent cloth, and do it at once. Mascheroni's instruction for liquid stains is precise: dab, do not rub, working from the edges of the mark towards its centre. Solvents, abrasives, detergents and shoe products are all ruled out by the maker for leather. Everyday care is lighter still: a soft cotton or wool cloth passed gently over the surface, now and then slightly dampened with water. Speed counts for more than any product here; the instruction itself opens with the word immediately.
Because of what is in them. Mascheroni says the structures of its sofas and armchairs are made predominantly in solid wood, and adds a figure of its own: the finished product weighs on average 50% more than a normal product. That is a statement about the company's production as a whole, and it should be read the same way for the Congress, whose load-bearing frame is solid wood as well. What it tells a buyer is where the material has gone: into the frame.
88 cm across and 78 cm front to back, the widest and deepest in the family. For comparison, the Congress 127 measures 85 by 70 cm, and the Congress Conference and Congress V are each 71 cm wide. The 135 also swivels and tilts, so the rectangle on the plan is the chair at rest; allow room behind it for the back to recline and for the chair to turn. Overall height runs from 133 to 140 cm, worth knowing if a sill, a picture or a shelf sits on the wall behind.
A Congress 135 has three movements and two dimensions worth knowing from the first morning. Five settings and checks, each with the range Mascheroni gives for it, taken in the sequence that makes sense.
On the Congress 135 the seat travels from 47 to 54 cm above the floor, a run of seven centimetres worked by the control lever under the seat. Sit with both feet flat and raise or lower the chair until that feels natural. Do this before anything else, because every later setting depends on it.
Mascheroni's sheet marks the chair as tilting, and the tilt as adjustable. Lean back a few times and regulate it until the movement feels right to you. A presidential chair is leaned into more than it is perched on, so the minute this takes is well spent.
The seat swivels, which changes how the chair should stand. Place it so that a turn takes you from the desk to the people in front of you, or to the cabinet at your back, with nothing in the path of the arms. The chair is 88 cm wide: try the full circle once, slowly.
The seat of the 135 is 52 cm deep, two more than any other chair in the family. Sit right back until the lowest of the three back cushions meets you. It is the deepest seat Mascheroni draws for the Congress, and it is made for sitting back in, with the high back doing its work.
The armrests belong to the body of the chair; as the seat goes up or down, so do they, from 64 to 71 cm. Once your height is set, roll up to the desk and see where the arms meet the underside of the top or its drawer. If they touch, it is your distance from the desk that changes, and the seat stays as you set it.
