BANGKOK — On the night Bonaldo turned ninety, the Italian design house did not launch a product. It closed a chapter of its own history and left the first piece of it in Bangkok.

For nine decades — since 1936, when a blacksmith named Giovanni Vittorio Bonaldo first learned to shape metal by hand in Villanova di Camposampiero, in Italy’s Padua region — the company has built its name one design era at a time. To mark ninety years, Bonaldo commissioned something it has never attempted before: nine editions of its Cross Lounge Chair, designed by Alain Gilles, each dressed entirely in materials, upholstery, and finish drawn from a single decade of the company’s own history. Nine chairs. Nine decades. Nothing else like it exists in Bonaldo’s ninety years.

The series is called The Series of Years.

Each chair carries its own number — I through IX — and a solid brass plaque bearing Alain Gilles’ signature, engraved with the decade it represents and the words that anchor the entire collection: “Made in Italy. Understood in Bangkok.”

Gilles, unable to travel to Bangkok, appeared instead on screen:

“I couldn’t be in Bangkok tonight, so I did the next best thing — I signed a piece of myself and sent it ahead. It’s the first time my own signature has traveled somewhere I haven’t.”
— Alain Gilles, designer of the Cross Lounge Chair, in a recorded message shown at the event

This is not a limited edition sitting in a warehouse waiting for nine buyers. It is a curated commission — before Alain Gilles configures a single decade, the collection’s curator decides who it belongs to. Through 2028, Sairoong “Sally” P.’s OL Atelier holds the exclusive curatorial presentation rights for The Series of Years in Thailand: it is the only place in the country where that decision gets made. Apart from No. I, which stays at Bonaldo Space and is not for sale, none of the other eight will ever sit in an open showroom for anyone to walk in and buy off the floor. Selection always comes first: Sally chooses who is even allowed to own each chair, not by who can afford it, but by whose own life the decade actually belongs to.

“Ninety years isn’t a number you put on a banner. It’s nine decades, and every one of them looked and felt different. Alain gave each of them its own chair. My job is deciding who’s ready to hold one.”
— Sairoong “Sally” P., curator, OL Atelier

A chair from the 1960s finds someone for whom the 1960s mean something real: a birth year, a parent’s era, a memory that already exists before the chair arrives. The chair isn’t the point. It simply gives shape to a decade someone already carries.

Chair No. I — Born in Bangkok

The first chair in the series — No. I of IX — represents the current decade, 2016–2026: The Synthesis. Finished in Mat Bronze with a textured, multi-tonal fabric, it brings a mix-and-match style to Alain Gilles’ design: a dialogue between European heritage and local spatial soul. It is, fittingly, the decade in which the company arrived in Bangkok.

It was unveiled on 1 October 2026 at Bonaldo Space by OL Atelier in Bangkok, at a private dinner marking Bonaldo’s 90th anniversary, hosted for Alberto Bonaldo, third-generation owner of the Padua furniture house. Alberto had been seated in the chair since before the evening began — without being told it was Chair No. I. He fitted the plaque himself, by hand, in front of the room. Chair No. I will remain permanently at Bonaldo Space. It is not for sale.

“In ninety years, we have never let a curator choose who receives our work. Tonight, we did.”
— Alberto Bonaldo, third-generation owner, Bonaldo

The evening was curated as an encounter between Italian and Thai culture, told through three storytellers — a designer, a chef and musicians. Guests were first greeted by silhouettes of Bangkok — tuk-tuks, street-food stalls, temples — moving across the walls in projection mapping, before Alain Gilles’ video message. Pistachio gelato was spun to order in front of guests, and master ranat (Thai xylophone) player Ajarn Khun In Narong Tosanga performed alongside Italian-style opera sung by Dr. Fueanglada Prawang Carlson. Throughout the night, guests were served the gastronomy of Chef Andy Yang, Thailand’s first US Michelin-starred chef (Rhong-Tiam, New York), who read Bonaldo’s Italian heritage through a Thai lens — from village betel leaf and old-style Thai pastry to a parting gift of salted caramel pistachio brittle fused with kayasart, the Thai harvest-festival sweet, presented as a pezzo da museo: a museum piece you are permitted to eat.

Guests included Lorenzo Vermigli, Deputy Head of Mission at the Embassy of Italy in Bangkok, together with leading architects and designers Duangrit Bunnag, Nitis Sthapitanonda, Attayut Piravinich and Thanawat Sukhaggananda.

The remaining eight chairs — representing every other decade since 1936 — are being completed individually. Each will go to someone chosen specifically because that decade is already theirs — a birth year, a parent’s story, a memory the chair didn’t create but simply gives a shape to. None will be announced until a home has actually been found; there is no waiting list, no application.

About Bonaldo — Founded in 1936 in Villanova di Camposampiero, in Italy’s Padua region, by blacksmith Giovanni Vittorio Bonaldo, Bonaldo has spent nine decades building furniture that treats Italian craftsmanship as a living material — from its earliest work in metal to today’s collaborations with designers including Alain Gilles. The Cross Lounge Chair remains part of Bonaldo’s current collection.

About Alain Gilles — Alain Gilles is a Belgian furniture and product designer whose work for Bonaldo includes the Cross Lounge Chair. The Series of Years marks his first collaboration with a Thai curator.

About OL Atelier — OL Atelier, part of the Olivia Living group, is the Bangkok-based design and curation practice of Sairoong “Sally” P., known for turning brand milestones into singular cultural objects and experiences rather than conventional launches. It holds the exclusive curatorial presentation rights for The Series of Years in Thailand through 2028. Bonaldo Space by OL Atelier, 29 Sukhumvit 39, Bangkok.

Media contact: K. Grace, OL Atelier · info@olivia-living.com · +66 65 426 5463 · +66 96 880 9898
Images and additional details: olivia-living.com/the-series-of-years
Source of record: client Drive folder “FOR Press Release (TH_EN)_FINAL_14OCT2026” (EN + TH docx/PDF + event photos). Archived in the Bonaldo Nas folder 15 Oct 2026.