Appearing as if it were a three-dimensional brushstroke of paint, the S-shaped Panton chair is just one curved piece of plastic that cantilevers over itself to form a seat. Prior to its development by experimental Danish designer Verner Panton (1926–98), no chair had ever been crafted from a single piece of molded plastic.
“I want to design furniture that grows up out of the floor,” Panton said of his work. “To turn the furniture into something organic, which never has four legs.” The designer, who studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen before working for Arne Jacobsen’s architecture firm, started experimenting with the concept of single-piece plastic chairs in the late 1950s, drafting sketches of what eventually became his signature eponymous work before creating a full-scale polystyrene model. But he ran into production trouble — no manufacturer would tackle the chair’s challenging engineering problems. Plastic was still a relatively new invention at the time, having been introduced to mass markets in the postwar era when most furniture makers still preferred to work in wood.
Enter Swiss furniture company Vitra, which agreed to take on the project in 1963.
It took four years — and ten prototypes — but Vitra and Panton were ultimately successful, creating a Panton chair made from fiberglass-reinforced polyester. It debuted in Danish design magazine Mobilia in 1967 and then at the 1968 Cologne Furniture Fair. The chair embodied a seductive combination of the era’s popular Space Age and Pop art aesthetics through its undulating form, futuristic material and punchy colors, resulting in mass demand for the relatively affordable piece of furniture. While it was discontinued in 1979 due to durability issues, the chair was reintroduced years later and Vitra has continued to manufacture it, experimenting with materials ranging from polyurethane foam to polypropylene in conjunction with Panton throughout the course of his lifetime. For the chair’s 50th anniversary, Vitra produced limited-edition chrome and glow-in-the-dark models.
The chair has become a celebrity in itself: It was featured on the cover of British Vogue in 1995 — with a nude Kate Moss atop it — and in 2006, it was inducted into the Danish Culture Canon. Numerous design museums hold the chair in their collections, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Design Museum in London and more. As far as chairs go, particularly those designed during the 1960s and 1970s, there are few better known and more beloved than the Panton.
Verner Panton introduced the word “groovy” — or at least its Danish equivalent — into the Scandinavian modern design lexicon. He developed fantastical, futuristic forms and embraced bright colors and new materials such as plastic, fabric-covered polyurethane foam and steel-wire framing for the creation of his chairs, sofas, floor lamps and other furnishings. And Panton’s ebullient Pop art sensibility made him an international design star of the 1960s and ’70s. This radical departure from classic Danish modernism, however, actually stemmed from his training under the greats of that design style.
Born on the largely rural Danish island of Funen, Panton studied architecture and engineering at Copenhagen’s Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, where the lighting designer Poul Henningsen was one of his teachers. After graduating, in 1951, Panton worked in the architectural office of Arne Jacobsen, and he became a close friend of Hans Wegner's.
Henningsen taught a scientific approach to design; Jacobsen was forever researching new materials; and Wegner, the leader in modern furniture design using traditional woodworking and joinery, encouraged experimental form.
Panton opened his own design office in 1955, issuing tubular steel chairs with woven seating. His iconoclastic aesthetic was announced with his 1958 Cone chair, modified a year later as the Heart Cone chair. Made of upholstered sheet metal and with a conical base in place of legs, the design shocked visitors to a furniture trade show in Copenhagen.
Panton went on to successive bravura technical feats. His curving, stackable Panton chair, his most popular design, was the first chair to be made from a single piece of molded plastic.
Panton had been experimenting with ideas for chairs made of a single material since the late 1950s. He debuted his plastic seat for the public in the design magazine Mobilia in 1967 and then at the 1968 Cologne Furniture Fair. The designer’s S-Chair models 275 and 276, manufactured during the mid-1960s by August Sommer and distributed by the bentwood specialists at Gebrüder Thonet, were the first legless chairs crafted from a single piece of plywood.
Panton would spend the latter half of the 1960s and early ’70s developing all-encompassing room environments composed of sinuous and fluid-formed modular seating made of foam and metal wire. He also created a series of remarkable lighting designs, most notably his Fun chandeliers — introduced in 1964 and composed of scores of shimmering capiz-shell disks — and the Space Age VP Globe pendant light of 1969.
Panton’s designs are made to stand out and put an eye-catching exclamation point on even the most modern decor.
Find vintage Verner Panton chairs, magazine racks, rugs, table lamps and other furniture on 1stDibs.
Carlo Ratti Set of Four Lulli Dining Chairs in Steel and Wood by ILC 1950s Italy
By Carlo Ratti
Located in Cascina, Pisa
The set of four Lulli dining chairs, designed by Carlo Ratti for ILC Lissone in the 1950s, features black painted steel legs combined with a curved and shaped veneered wood seat and ...
Steel
Vittorio Introini Set of Four Longobarda Dining Chairs by Saporiti 1960s Italy
By Vittorio Introini, Saporiti
Located in Cascina, Pisa
Set of four Longobarda chairs with chromed metal legs, seat, and back upholstered with blue shade fabric. The Longobarda chair was designed by Vittorio Introini and manufactured by ...
Metal
Vico Magistretti Set of Four Red Selene Chairs by Artemide 1970s
By Vico Magistretti, Artemide
Located in Cascina, Pisa
A set of two Selene stackable chairs in red resin reinforced with fiberglass, designed by Vico Magistretti in 1967 and produced by Artemide Milano in the 1970s. The Selene chair was designed in 1967 by Magistretti to be produced in a plastic material, as he affirmed: "The seat and the back are simple curved surfaces. For me, the legs represented the real image of the piece, with as small a volume as that of any common wooden chair. I solved it by exploiting the molding of a plastic material formed by a simple 3-millimeter-thick sheet with a simple but very resistant "S" cross-section which inter-related the object with ordinary chairs without however the elephant legs so untypical of chairs. It was fun working with the model maker on the wood model." When produced in series, "a unit comes out of the machine every five minutes": Selene is the fruit of a single compression molding process on a pre-impregnated sheet (Ottagono 15 / 1969). Magistretti solves the problem of leg resistance by adopting an "S-shaped" configuration that confers resistance to a sheet only 3 millimeters thick. The formal and structural solution had already been previously adopted for the Chimera lamp...
Plastic, Rubber
Carlo Ratti Set of Four Chairs in Plywood by Società Compensati Curvi 1950s
By Società Compensati Curvati, Carlo Ratti
Located in Cascina, Pisa
Set of four dining chairs with a frame in black lacquered metal and seat in curved plywood, attributed to Carlo Ratti and produced by Società Compensati Curvati in the 1950s. In Italy, at the beginning of the XX century, industries of curved solid wood arose under license of Michael Thonet, and through the International Exhibitions the processing of curved wood became more and more widespread. The Expo of the first decade was also attended by the wood manufacturers of Monza, while in 1905 Otto Helzer, in Switzerland, patented wooden structures in curved laminated, whose strength was equivalent to those in steel. The Ratti brothers of Monza took their cue from the solid wood laminate to create furniture that, instead of wooden elements, used sheets of wood. The brothers Ratti, Carlo and Mario, also began to follow the young artistic avant-gardes (cubism, futurism and abstractionism). The mastery of wooden sculpture influenced Carlo in the design and realization of furniture of fine neo-plastic artistic workmanship and decò, receiving honors from the Prince of Piedmont Umberto di Savoia. In 1919, in Milan, the first Lombard Exhibition of Decorative Arts was set up (later to become the Triennale) and the Ratti brothers exhibited their furniture in solid wood but also in curved panel with a new system of curvature, the one in Telo. The canvas system was developed by the Ratti brothers with the help of a friend, Cesare Cantù. They developed an elastomer bag in which the mould was inserted with the panel to be bent and, closing it with clamps, the air inside was removed, thus making the panel adhere to the mould. Carlo and Mario found in the Telo system a means by which they could make objects and furniture in the three spatial directions with large surface curvatures, without limits of thickness and minimum radii of curvature. In 1921 in Stuttgart the first Salone del Mobile was inaugurated and the Fratelli Ratti of Monza made itself known internationally by presenting solid wood furniture and also furniture in load-bearing plywood, flanked by furniture with framed and interchangeable covers. The Expo became meeting places to verify and present the novelties in the furniture and industrialization sector and, with the development of Industrial Design, the first architects joined in the design of the furniture industries. The Ratti Brothers, in the various international and national exhibitions, also presented incredible objects in their realization with the system in Telo. After 1930 Carlo and Mario produced many containers for radio and folding chairs for cinema but in 1939 they divided and in Monza Mario remained who, with his sons Antonio and Angela, formed the Società Compensati Curvi...
Metal
Vico Magistretti Set of Two Red Selene Chairs by Artemide 1970s
By Artemide, Vico Magistretti
Located in Cascina, Pisa
A set of two Selene stackable chairs in red resin reinforced with fiberglass, designed by Vico Magistretti in 1967 and produced by Artemide Milano in the 1970s. The Selene chair was designed in 1967 by Magistretti to be produced in a plastic material, as he affirmed: "The seat and the back are simple curved surfaces. For me, the legs represented the real image of the piece, with as small a volume as that of any common wooden chair. I solved it by exploiting the molding of a plastic material formed by a simple 3-millimeter-thick sheet with a simple but very resistant "S" cross-section which inter-related the object with ordinary chairs without however the elephant legs so untypical of chairs. It was fun working with the model maker on the wood model." When produced in series, "a unit comes out of the machine every five minutes": Selene is the fruit of a single compression molding process on a pre-impregnated sheet (Ottagono 15 / 1969). Magistretti solves the problem of leg resistance by adopting an "S-shaped" configuration that confers resistance to a sheet only 3 millimeters thick. The formal and structural solution had already been previously adopted for the Chimera lamp (a self-supporting methacrylate sheet) and in developing the legs of the Demetrio table...
Plastic, Rubber
Augusto Bozzi Set of Four Ariston Chairs in Plywood and Metal by Saporiti 1950s
By Fratelli Saporiti, Augusto Bozzi
Located in Cascina, Pisa
Set of four dining chairs model Ariston with structure in curved plywood and black lacquered metal legs. The Ariston chair was designed by Augusto Bozzi and manufactured by Saporiti...
Metal
A new video from Dezeen anoints them as the period's most significant seating designs.
Of the million-plus items on 1stdibs, some seem to have transcended time, looking as fresh today as when they were first produced. The pieces highlighted on our new Iconic Designs page stand out for longevity, functionality and quality of design and manufacture — just the tonic for the present unsettled moment.
