Grab a seat at Trovo, Madrid’s chair specialist sitting pretty

For many madrileños, Sundays kick off with a bit of antiquing and tapeo around the city’s largest and oldest open-air market, El Rastro. Its stalls, where objects old and new have been sold as far back as the 18th century, have given rise to a clutch of antique shops that remain open beyond the market’s hours of operation.

Lola Feijóo, an antiquarian originally from Galicia, opened her shop dedicated exclusively to chairs in 2023. Though only a short walk from the mercado, Trovo offers a fresh perspective. “It’s true that when I started – and even as recently as last week – colleagues from El Rastro will come by and ask me in shock, ‘Only chairs?’” she says, laughing.

After earning an art history degree, Feijóo spent more than 20 years working across the antiques and restoration industries with a specialisation in appraisal and valuation. When she decided to open a space of her own, her instincts led her to make an initial acquisition for an undetermined future business. That purchase was of a set of wood-and-rattan Dutch bobbin chairs from the 1920s, a style known for knobbly, lathe-turned legs and arms. The procurement of this piece set the course for Feijóo’s venture. “The chair is an object that has been designed in so many ways,” she says. “I was drawn to the fact that I could explore the dimensions of chairs and the materials that they’re made from, as well as pieces made by specific architects and designers, though there are many wonderful examples by anonymous designers too.”

Focusing on seating was also a practical matter: Feijóo is able to lift and handle the objects herself and collect them without the need for a large storage space. In her cosy shop, visitors can find chairs that stack, others that fold and some that are upholstered; there are those that are part of sets alongside the solitary and the sculptural.

Nestled along Trovo’s smooth white walls are cult classics: for example, a pair of Gaudi armchairs by Vico Magistretti in off-white fibre-reinforced polyester (€650) or a reissued Argyle chair by Charles Rennie Mackintosh in black lacquered ash (€1,200). Feijóo is particularly excited about a recent find – four Peota chairs from the 1970s by Gigi Sabadin, who used plywood to create gorgeous curves. Feijóo sources her chairs globally and makes regular visits to France and Italy.

Feijóo’s favourites are those by Italian designers from the 1950s and 1960s but she is not a slave to specific styles or periods, instead relying on her instincts. She is also a proponent of mixing chairs as part of developing a personal sense of interior-design style. “I am of the mindset that if a chair’s design is beautiful, it is imbued with its own inherent personality,” she says. “So it will always pair well with other chairs.”
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