Coppola Outdoor Dining Chair

COPPOLA is a Rove Concepts Original Design.

To add depth to our in-house designs, we created the Imaginary Vintage Series. This framework allows us to imagine what could have been the origin story that inspired the shapes and curves of each masterpiece. Please enjoy responsibly.

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In the late 1950s, an Italian stage designer named Aurelio Coppola became known for one extraordinary habit: he followed light the way others followed seasons. He traveled across North Africa, the Mediterranean, and southern Italy with a single sketchbook, studying how different cultures built spaces meant for gathering, storytelling, and rest from the heat.

What fascinated him most was the humble campaign chair — a design used by explorers, film crews, and nomads alike. To Coppola, this folding form symbolized temporary belonging: a seat that arrived with you, adapted, listened, then disappeared when it was no longer needed.

He spent years refining his own version, imagining a chair that could feel both rooted and nomadic, both constructed and breathable. The key, he believed, was tension — the balance between a supportive frame and a soft sling that moved with the sitter’s body. For this he used olivewood, prized for its subtle grain and resilience, and canvas dyed in the sandy neutrals of sun-baked earth.

Locals who sat in his early prototypes joked that the chairs made them feel like directors on a film set. Coppola loved this. He said a chair should make you feel “ready to witness something.”

His final creation, later nicknamed the Coppola Chair, became a quiet icon among actors, architects, and travelers who prized it for its restrained elegance and quiet strength. Yet it was never mass-produced; Coppola believed each piece should carry the imperfections of handcraft, the mark of the journey that shaped it.

Today, Rove reimagines that elusive design as the Coppola Dining Chair.

You can see Aurelio’s fingerprints in the sling backrest, the airy proportions, the effortless posture — a chair built for conversations that stretch long after sunset. It stands lightly in a room, as if always ready to fold up and follow the next story, the next table, the next gathering. And like the originals, it doesn’t demand attention. It rewards it.

Imaginary Vintage No. 071: Coppola — a traveler’s seat, refined into a ritual of dining and story.