The stool harbinger an exceptional career
The Mocho stool was the first major piece Sergio designed. Simple, with round seat and a crossmember underneath linking the three feet, Mocho was the harbinger of a brilliant career. Sergio, who always fed from the Brazilian popular culture, was inspired by a woman from the countryside milking a cow on one of those typical farm stools, many of which with one foot. A piece carved from solid wood, Mocho is a fun and, at the same time, admirably elegant stool.
Journalist and expert Adélia Borges says that if it were possible to choose one of Sergio's favorite pieces of furniture, she would choose Mocho. "It has a lot to do with the Brazilian tradition and is enormously simple, in essential forms."
The first version of Mocho, which had a more dug-in seat and a cushion firmly attached to it, came in 1954. With the change that took place on the market and changed gauges, the seat got shallower and Sergio took the cushion away, probably to allow for the purest stool possible, since it already had the comfort of the curve. He made slight changes to the shape of the feet, raised the crossmembers and the seat was lighter, shallower. The strap's design was also changed.
"Mocho has a handle for carrying the stool. This idea of carrying the stool around by hand is warming," says Fernando Mendes. "When you look at the Mocho from the side, with its round seat, you see a trapezoid formed between the feet, the lower crossmember and the seat. It is a triangle connecting the three feet. All these geometric figures appear in the drawing."
Remarkably modern, Mocho, which turned 60, heralded what Sergio's career would be. When he entered Oca, the store that transformed the idea of furniture in Rio de Janeiro, carrying the stool, Sergio did not know that he was already carrying what would become the hallmark of his work with him.
