What do you think of when you hear “Lolita?” If you’re like most of the English-speaking (and some of the erstwhile Russian-speaking) world, you think “flirtatious and over-sexed youngster,” or perhaps, “pederast,” or—among the fewer ranks, but there even so, “tragically flawed anti-hero and child molester abuses the trust of libidinous pre-teen with a Father complex,” or something like that.

Lolita chair. Designed by Raul Romeu. Manufactured by Rason.

Being a litteratur and bibliophile, I tend to the latter. However despicable he would have been were he in the real world, Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert was an artist at heart, sublimely devoted to the aesthetics of his illusion—his great love for she of the name I discuss herein. All this by way of extracting meaning from Spanish designer Raul Romeu’s choice to call his expertly crafted solid walnut dining chair “Lolita.” Maybe the language gap is to blame. Maybe among Spanish speakers (and Portuguese for that matter), “Lolita” means little more than “little Lola,” though one would have to think that the worldly Latinos (ever more worldly than us insular Americanos), would have more than a passing familiarity with this masterwork of Western Lit. Perhaps it’s just a case of “contemporary designer goes cryptic,” as many a contemporary designer is wont to do. But enough…

Raul Romeu’s “Lolita” for Rason is a handsome dining chair in dark walnut and white. Reminiscent of the seamless wood manipulations of classic designers like Alvar Aalto, Lolita is solid enough to support the most prodigious of buttocks yet slim enough to integrate into any modern scheme. One striking aspect of the piece is its pseudo dual-wide seat, meaning it looks big enough for two but doesn’t quite achieve loveseat dimension. With an open back and consequent airy aspect, the chair makes great use of negative space. Uninhabited, it makes up a sort of interior window, thus inviting multiple views of other design elements. Paired in front of plate glass windows, for example, it plays with our perspective, inviting a dual vision of inside and out; or placed one across the other (with a glass table top in between, perhaps), it complicates notions of the meaning(s) of “transparent,” inviting, in one interpretation, the illusion that we might glide through our furnishings like water or like air—harmonious for Feng Shui devotees, but potentially perilous for the clumsy or the near-sighted. And as a closing thought, if you accept Kubrick’s reading in his version (Lolita, 1960), she started out as neither, but ended up as both.