dear good lines  

trying again
at a picture post

Looks like
there would be a significant difference in seat height if this upholstered chair were converted to cane ? Could it be that there were two different versions of the chair frame, one caned and one upholstered ?
Just a thought. . .

I thought that too..
I thought that too, the spacing between the top of the seat and the other rungs looks to be right
If the seat pad was removed, the spacing would become uneven

I stand corrected
I stand corrected
Found this !

exactly so
the spacing of the rungs is more consistent in the upholstered version. perhaps they were designed with this in mind. and in looking at the frame of one from underneath, there are no lines on the seat frame from where there would have been a wrapping of cane. if i could find upholstery fabric like these, i would consider it. up close it is raised pink fuzzy lines on a black background.

do you
have some relavent information you could share about that statment? thanks

.
is this a chivari chair?

I found the picture
I found the picture by searching 'Ponti artisan'
But as someone else said it is often misattributed, I have no idea..
First time I've seen the chair..as beautiful as it is

my understanding
is that ponti looked to the traditional chiviari (sp?) when he designed the leggera and later superleggera chairs. i have also read he designed some others from this idea, the artisan being one. i do know there were many italian made variants on this theme that were not ponti that are often attributed to him for sales purposes, but every reference i have seen at this point has claimed these are his (precious few references though). tynellbuyer?

tynellbuyer
gave me a little wake up call about the id of these chairs. i realize my prior research, while monolithic in attribution, was not conclusive. it prompted me to dig further. the other pic posted by robert1960 looks like an image from a designboom entry on ponti. a further look a their page has their info coming from the design museum london from an exhibition from the ponti archives. encouraging so far. i managed to scare up a catalog from this exhibition. hopefully when it arrives it might shed some light on this. i'll post when it arrives.