Vintage Panton Chair by Vitra, 1960s

Want to Learn More About Verner Panton?

Verner Panton is often thought to be one of the most influential Danish designers of the 20th century. He contributed to the Pop Art movement in the 1960s with sleek styles representing the oft-cited “Space Age” feel of the decade. Born in 1926, and initially working as an artist in Odense, Panton studied architecture at the Royal Danish Academy of Art before graduating in 1951. He then worked under Verner Panton , a fellow Danish architect and furniture designer. He was greatly influenced by Jacobsen, assisting him with various designs, including the famous Ant Chair. Soon after, Verner Panton started his own design company and became known for his bold and boundary-pushing ideas such as a collapsible house in 1955 and the Cardboard House and the Plastic House in 1960.

The notoriety of Verner Panton

In the 1950s, Verner Panton thought about making a stackable cantilevered plastic chair that was one complete piece, which led to the invention of the Panton S Chair, one of his most iconic and mass-produced designs. Another celebrated Panton creation was the Cone Chair in 1959, which caused a minor scandal and cemented his place as a visionary, exciting designer. These Dining Chairs , padded cone-shaped metal shells placed point-down on cross-shaped metal bases, the Cone began as a design for his parents’ new restaurant. A Danish businessman spotted it at the opening and offered to put it into production for Panton. When it was photographed in a Danish design magazine two years later, Panton draped naked with shop mannequins and models on the chairs. Needless to say this attracted a lot of publicity. After this, in the late 1960s and early 70s, he started designing “total environments”, including the Astoria Hotel at Trondheim in Norway, covering the walls and floors in the same pattern. He’s also known for his work for Der Spiegel, a German magazine based in Hamburg.

The return of Verner Panton

In 1995, British Vogue featured a naked Kate Moss on a Panton Chair, pushing his designs back to centre-stage after a brief time away from the spotlight. His 1960s pieces were put back into production and he was invited to design an exhibition at Trapholdtmuseum in Kolding, Denmark. The exhibition opened on 17 September 1998, but Verner Panton had died in Copenhagen 12 days earlier.

Swiss founders Willi and Erika Fehlbaum launched Vitra in 1934 as a shopfitting business in the Basel region, near the border of Germany and Switzerland. During a visit to America in 1953, the Fehlbaums became enamored with the innovative designs of Charles and Ray Eames—known today for the iconic Eames Lounge Chair & Ottoman (1956). In 1957, Vitra obtained licensing rights to produce Herman Miller furniture for the European market and began to manufacture the work of Charles and Ray Eames, as well as George Nelson—famous for the Pop Art-inspired Marshmallow Sofa (1956). 

In 1967, after working closely with Danish designer Verner Panton, Vitra introduced the Panton Chair (originally conceived in 1959/60). The design was deemed a modernist landmark because it was the first wholly plastic, stackable, cantilever chair made in one piece. Vitra soon became internationally recognized as a company that collaborates with talented, progressive designers to create cutting-edge, high-quality products.

Rolf Fehlbaum (b. 1941), eldest son to Willi and Erika, became Vitra’s Chief Executive in 1977. In 1981, after a disastrous fire at the Vitra facilities in Weil am Rhein, Germany, Rolf commissioned British architect Nicholas Grimshaw to design a new manufacturing hall. More architectural commissions followed, and the Vitra Campus (as the architectural ensemble came to be known) earned acclaim for the way its high-concept, contemporary buildings integrated into the surrounding natural landscape and residential areas. Architect Frank Gehry designed the first public building, the Vitra Design Museum (1989), to house Rolf’s ever-growing collection of chairs, the largest collection in the world.  Other buildings on campus were designed by the esteemed architects Tadao Ando (Conference Pavilion, 1993), Zaha Hadid (Fire Station, 1993), Alvaro Siza (Factory Building, 1994), and Herzog & de Meuron (VitraHaus, 2010).

After thirty years, Vitra’s partnership with Herman Miller was mutually terminated in 1984. Vitra, however, acquired the design rights to pieces by Charles and Ray Eames and George Nelson for Europe and the Middle East. For six decades, Vitra has been producing first-class furniture from iconic and internationally renowned designers and architects. Other famous designs in Vitra’s collection include Isamu Noguchi’s Noguchi Table (1939), Shiro Kuramata’s How High the Moon Chair (1986), Borek Sípek's Ota Otanek Chair (1988), Philippe Starck's Louis XX Stacking Chair (1992), and numerous patterns and textiles created by Alexander Girard. Vitra has also won countless design-related awards, such as the Lucky Strike Design Award in 1994, and their pieces can be found in design museums around the world, including the Tate Modern and Design Museum in London, Museum of Modern Art in New York, and, of course, Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein.

* Images courtesy of Vitra