Michael Noah was on vacation in Greece, trying to relax, when he realized the thermometer had hit 114 degrees Fahrenheit. The heat wave was part of the hottest month ever recorded on Earth.

“My children are now 13 and 15, and I want there to be a world for them,” he says. “Something has to give.”

As the project lead for furniture and product design at Winch Design, he’s in a position to help be the kind of change he wants to see. The company has been working with Summit Furniture on an updated line of furniture called Arc in Colour that’s built of sustainable, plantation-grown teak, along with fabrics made from recycled fishing nets and textile waste.

“We want to make a market for this,” he says. “People are a bit more conscious about sustainability.”

The idea is not so much to make furniture that looks like it came from recycled and sustainable materials, but instead to make furniture that looks luxurious while being crafted in a way that’s better for the planet. As of early August, Noah and his team were working with Summit to perfect the materials used to make the lounge chair, with plans to expand the Arc in Colour line into bar chairs, dining chairs and the modular-type sofas seen above. They’re still working on pricing, but Noah says it will not be a custom line. Instead, the idea is to make it accessible for lots of clients—since more and more yacht owners are making verified sustainable materials part of their project briefs.

“Before, it wasn’t in the forefront of their mind, but now it is,” he says. “We have a boat in London we’re delivering fairly soon, and the client is super involved. He wants to make sure everything is checked.”

The post Eco-Friendly Yacht Furniture appeared first on Yachting.

Generally speaking, two types of furniture have always been aboard yachts. Some designers pluck sofas and chairs from home stores and bolt them through so they will stay put in a seaway, while other designers create custom, built-in boating furniture. Both solutions work in their own ways, with the home pieces often being more stylish, and the built-ins generally offering more practical features such as undercushion stowage.

The new Jacques-Yves line of modular furniture is aiming to be both. It’s the brainchild of the team at Zuccon International Project, which has long worked with yachtbuilders such as Ferretti Group and Sanlorenzo, and the team at Poltrona Frau Custom Interiors, which increased its focus on the yachting sector during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Boats, and yachts in particular, are seen as private islands guaranteeing their owners not only comfort but also safety,” Poltrona Frau CEO Nicola Coropulis said in announcing the furniture line. “That is why we have been developing products specifically for the yachting world with Zuccon International Project.”

The Jacques-Yves line is a modular seating system that’s intended for indoor or outdoor use on board. It is available in a variety of finishes. Poltrona Frau leather and fabrics are offered for indoor use, with waterproof fabrics for outdoor placement. Each piece has generous volume—note the size of the cushioned area shown above—but that volume is contained within compact dimensions, to work within the limited space of, say, a yacht salon or aft deck. Elements such as armrests and seat depth are reduced in a way that the teams say maintains comfort, and stowage is built into the seats below the cushions.

“Designing a sofa for the yachting market was both an unusual and a fascinating challenge,” Bernardo Zuccon said. “The real turning point in approaching a project so different from those I am used to was applying all my baggage of experience in the world of yachts to designing a sofa that really does solve the problems raised by its unusual location: an environment that moves on water.”

The post Jacques-Yves Yacht Furniture Has Form and Function appeared first on Yachting.

Riva, which has been launching boats in Italy since 1842, continues to broaden its brand with numerous products and experiences that fans can enjoy, separate from the exhilaration of spending a day out on the water aboard a Riva-built yacht.

New this year, for instance, is a Riva Privée that recently opened at the Cristallo, which is a luxury resort and spa in Italy. The temporary space will be open to guests at the resort’s Stube 1872 restaurant, where the chef has created a specialty Riva menu that highlights flavors evocative of the sea.

For fans of the Riva brand who can’t make it to Italy this summer to enjoy a taste or cruise, there is the Riva Boutique, which is accessible online. This shop for all things Riva has grown into a sizable store with offerings now available in multiple departments, including clothing, accessories, furniture and collectibles. 

Riva’s products are intended to suit all kinds of tastes, from pocket knives to cashmere hats to toys for the kids. Visitors to the online store will also find pillows, beach towels, sushi sets, coin trays, polo shirts, scarves, robes, bathing suits, lamps, tables, chairs and more. Serious collectors can choose a bronze fountain pen ($1,666) or metal scale models of some of the most popular boat models Riva has launched throughout the shipyard’s history.

Riva makes two versions of its pocket knife: the Aquarama (seen here), with a classic wooden handle, or “hull,” and the Rivamare, whose handle has the kind of silver finish seen on some of the builder’s newer boats. The handles have different shapes, just like the boat hulls, and, when the knives are open, they look like boats underway. The two are sold in a set ($1,212). 

This leather Backgammon set ($5,050) is made with mahogany, maple, steel and leather—all materials that can be found aboard Riva yachts. A Mambo fabric set ($2,828) is also available.

The Mareminerale fragrance diffuser ($133) is a way to bring home the scent of dawn over the sea, making just about any place reminiscent of a walk along the shoreline. 

Riva worked with Italy’s Borgo Cashmere to create this hat ($222), which is inspired by the classic sailor’s wool cap. Note the Riva logo in chrome-plated metal.

This balancing holder Atmosphere set($338) can hold and tilt either the Riva diffuser or candle ($66), both created by Culti Milano for the Riva home collection.  

This is just one boat in the four-piece Riva toy set ($515), which includes an Aquarama, an Aquariva, a Rivarama, and a toy truck to deliver any of them to the water. 

Built of grooved mahogany, the Riva trunk (price on request) can be used to store footwear, towels or whatever owners want aboard a yacht, in a home foyer or elsewhere.

Riva is working with other Italian-based brands, such as Borgo Cashmere and Culti Milano, to bring ever more products to market. They all share the styling that boaters will recognize aboard any Riva yacht, with colors and materials that can blend in aboard or bring a slice of the sea into various parts of a home ashore.  

The post Riva Yacht’s Boutique Unveils New Products appeared first on Yachting.

In 2010, Arun Maheswaran took a job at a company that made carbon-fiber gangways and similar products for yachts. He was a technical draftsman who had never set foot on a yacht, but through his work, he found himself spending a lot of time aboard them at events such as the Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Monaco boat shows.

“By 2016, I had seen a lot of yachts and met a lot of people,” he says. “I loved it, but I saw a lot of cheap furniture on expensive yachts. This is why I started the company Octoport.”

A number of things about yacht furniture—and, in particular, exterior furniture—left Maheswaran scratching his head. Why, he wondered, were superyacht owners buying teak furniture whose color changed after a couple of seasons? Or rattan furniture that looked worn in a similarly short time period? Why wasn’t the exterior furniture built in colors that matched the rest of the yacht’s exterior paint scheme? And why didn’t items such as sun loungers and side tables have the same shapes as the exterior of the yacht itself, say, with the long sun loungers echoing the design of the yacht’s sheerline?

Carbon-fiber manufacturing, he knew, made all these things possible. So, Maheswaran started drawing sketches and showing them to everyone in the industry who might offer a valuable opinion. The result was Octoport’s first collection, Rhea, which intrigued some big-name yacht designers enough that they made the trek to his Germany office from the nearby Lürrsen shipyard when they were there working on other projects.

That was before the coronavirus pandemic hit. Since then, he has started to receive requests for project quotes, and he has created additional collections with a goal of introducing one per year.

The newest collection, Pioneer, debuted at the Monaco Yacht Show in September. It was presented along with Octoport’s deck-lighting technology, which makes the caulk strips in teak decking light up in whatever colors owners desire. (The same technology is used in Octoport’s furniture pieces such as tables with backlit teak tops.)

Pretty much every piece of furniture Octoport produces is a prototype, with sizes and colors customizable, depending on what the yacht owner has in mind for the space. The company keeps no quantities of stock furniture.

“The owners are all different types of people,” Maheswaran says. “I think it’s better not to have stock. When they order a collection, we will start the production in Hamburg, with the paint job done in Bremen.”

Overall, Maheswaran is trying to inject new thinking into the creation of exterior guest spaces throughout the yachting industry. He believes that as the yachts themselves take on more modern styling, so too should the furniture that is everywhere on board.

“I try to make my design what I would like if I had a big yacht,” he says. “The shapes everywhere should be matched to the modern yacht.”  

The post Octoport’s Furniture Creates Onboard Elegance appeared first on Yachting.