Chair Series: Panton

Today we have another iconic design called Panton chair. Even though it comes in nearly all the colors imaginable, its name has nothing to do with pantone color range. Verner Panton is the name of its author.

These days we've learned to mold plastic into any shape at all but in 1960s, and that's the year when it was first manufactured, many companies considered it impossible and refused. The author has almost given up on it but then the challenge was finally accepted by Vitra and they have succeeded.

The shape of Panton chair is very anthropomorphic and in 2008 it has inspired another designer, Fabio Novembre, to create Him and Her chairs which take the shape of the classic Panton chair quite literally, reimagining it as a naked male or female body. Such a sexy Italian homage to the restrained Nordic minimalism! This is my favorite version and some day I'd hope to create an ironic Greek and gay inspired interior with it.

Many years before I've almost gotten a wire take on the Panton chair but seems it's only manufactured and sold in China and I couldn't find a way to ship it to Ukraine. Whatever variation it is, there's nothing to disassemble and obviously the shipping container is going to be massive.

The original Panton chair is made in two versions, modern plastic and classic polyurethane foam (the same material that has been used in 1960s). Classic is well over $1000 while plastic is around $350. Copies are plentiful and cheap but they are not branded as Panton obviously, try searching for curved and modern instead.

Him and Her chairs are very hard to come by, never seen them priced below $300, I'm not sure this model has been copied at all. Wire version can be found for less than $100 in Asia but is otherwise hard to find and shipping is next to impossible.