Valentine Glez Wohlers may have been living in Europe when she designed and created her first Prickly Pear Chair, but the project was half-inspired by Mexico. The classic Louis XV chair reaches new artistic heights with Wohlers’ interpretation, an homage to both her life across the pond via the design history of the chair’s shape, and also her Mexican heritage via the cushion made to look (and feel) like the Nopal cactus, a symbol of Mexican pride.  As for the wild herd of chair backs that snake skyward from the main chair frame?  It’s a fusion of the cactus’s natural shape and Wohlers’ obviously unbridled imagination.  The Prickly Pear Chair made its world debut at an exhibition during Milan Design Week in 2009.