In the 1960s, avant-garde artist couple Christo and Jeanne-Claude began wrapping monuments around the world in fabric and rope. A sculpture in the garden of Rome’s Villa Borghese (1963). A gilded statue on Paris’s Place du Trocadéro (1964).

The monument to Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan’s Piazza del Duomo (1970). The arresting visuals gave Italian architect Cini Boeri an idea: Why not wrap a sofa? (Christo and Jeanne-Claude had wrapped furniture too, for what it’s worth, but they didn’t exactly prioritize function.)