It may be hard to imagine someone falling in love with a chair, but Susane Ronai says she’s done it lots of times.

”I look at them and fall in love. I don’t want to let them go,” says Ronai, who searches for chairs from the 1940s for her boutique in the Miami Design District. Since she can’t keep all the originals, she does the next best thing. She interprets the chair’s design and manufactures them herself, selling them at her Susane R Lifestyle Boutique. Her collection has 10 reproduction vintage chairs with names such as Glam, Hug, Flirt, Chic, Absolute and Deko, among others.

One chair is named D&D after Dorothy Draper, the late, famous decorator.

”I had a pair of fabulous D&D chairs,” Ronai recalls. “I don’t copy the originals. The comfort level has to be more. People were more formal in the 1940s. They didn’t slouch in a chair.”

Ronai, who has had the store for 15 years, has been manufacturing ”inspirations” from the vintage chairs for three.

”A few years ago everything was a straight line [in furniture]. I wanted things to be glamorous. Glam started to creep into the vocabulary,” she says.

Before the recent Art Basel events in the District, Ronai arranged a vignette in her window featuring a red chair. ”Someone came by the night before the opening and bought the entire window setting! I had to do it all over again,” she says.

But she’s happy that customers appreciate the look and contents of her boutique. Ronai is known for her taste in chairs, lamps and artwork. ”I consider my business a serious art gallery,” she says.

Her oldest items are four panels from a 200-year-old Moroccan door. ”I fell in love with the artwork,” she recalls. “The panels are carved on both sides. You can’t use them for doors here because the entrance is too small for most people. But they can be used as art; lean them against the wall. Or make a coffee table out of them.”

She has one-of-a kind collectibles, such as an African tribal chief’s bed from Camaroon carved from one tree trunk. ”You have to be a hotshot to sleep on it,” Ronai says of the $6,500 bed.

Some things are pricey because they are rare or antique. An impressive rock crystal lamp from the 1980s costs $6,000 and a bronze statue of a sitting Buddha from Thailand is $4,160, but a set of six burgundy martini glasses costs $145 and costume jewelry necklaces range from $40 to $75.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 31st, 2006 at 5:19 pm and is filed under Furniture. Tags: Africa, African, Antique, Design, Furniture, Lifestyle, Miami, Opening, Price, Set, Small, Table, Thailand, Turin, . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.