Design Moment The revolutionary Panton chair turns 50 this year.
This Danish designer’s revolutionary idea has earnt a seat of honour in cultural history, writes
Fifty years ago, Verner Panton’s S
(for ‘stacking’) chair made its debut in Mobilia, a Danish design magazine. The cover, showing seven of the seats in various shades, and the accompanying story inside, caused a sensation. No one had seen a chair like it: just one piece of cantilevered polyester, poised on its own pedestal. The sinuous form soon wrapped itself around the collective imagination.
Panton conceived the idea for the chairs in the 1950s, when visiting a factory making buckets that neatly stacked one inside the other. While he toyed with the concept for some time – he produced a version in cantilevered moulded plywood with Thonet from 1955 – his efforts to translate the idea to plastic were thwarted. Few manufacturers wanted to touch something so radical and tricky to produce. But then Panton knocked on the door of Willi Fehlbaum, managing director of Swiss manufacturer Vitra. Fehlbaum was up for a challenge and in 1967 a limited number went into production.
The first series (1967–68) was made from a cold-moulded, fibreglass-reinforced polyester resin with a painted finish, and the second (1968–71) from rigid polyurethane foam. A third series (1971–79) came in a thermoplastic polystyrene. But this material quickly degraded and looked shabby, so Vitra mothballed the chair for four years.
In 1983, the company unveiled a new version, again in rigid polyurethane foam, with a high-gloss lacquer finish and Panton’s signature on the base. This one has remained in production ever since. In 1999 it was dubbed the Panton Chair Classic, in order to distinguish it from a new, lighter and cheaper companion series Vitra released that year. This newcomer, made of polypropylene and available in six colours, is known simply as the Panton chair. In 2005, Vitra launched a mini version, the Panton Junior, for children.
While colours have come and gone, the Classic now comes in only black, white or red. White remains the biggest seller for Space, the Australian agent for Vitra. “It sits well in all interior environments,” says David Hartikainen, Space’s NSW showroom manager. Panton’s chair is “one of the true icons of design”, he adds. “The simplicity of the design allows it to be used in different applications without competing with anything surrounding it.”
Melbourne architect Rob Mills agrees. He bought a set in white for his own dining space 10 years ago, teaming them with an antique French timber table. “The pure, sculptural shapes and the rustic table looked fantastic together,” he says. “The chair’s versatile – such a strong shape in a single material and colour – and sits comfortably wherever you put it.” Proving that point, Mills now has them encircling a mid-century Saarinen table. WHAT IT MEANS TO US Panton’s revolutionary chair quickly established itself as sleek and daring, a symbol of the Space Age. It starred in UK magazine Nova in 1970 (a story titled ‘How to Undress in Front of Your Husband’) and on a 1995 British Vogue cover with a naked Kate Moss; in both cases the chair was racy red. While Vitra stays mum on sales figures, the chair is available in 17 countries and features in many museum collections. Tagged ‘the sexiest chair ever made’, this seat doesn’t take its fame sitting down. #