processes.
They started out making auto accessories but soon gravitated toward more artistic endeavors. The Castellis recognized early on that plastic materials, unlike natural ones, "acquire an identity ... only by means of the project itself."Success hinged on the design. So they recruited topflight designers for even the most mundane objects. In Kartell's hands, flyswatters, juicers, ashtrays, lamps, and storage containers acquired an elegant beauty. A standing dustpan designed by Gino Colombini had such geometry and grace that it wound up in a number of design-museum collections.
The Castellis' genius was to take plastic at face value. Unlike so many American manufacturers, they didn't try to deploy it as a substitute for a natural material. They didn't rake it with a woodlike grain, stipple it with the pebbly texture of leather, or sprinkle it with glitter to give it the glow of gold. They let plastic be plastic. The products emerging from their Milan factory boasted bright primary colors, sleek surfaces, crisp Euclidian shapes, undulating curves. It was a style so unabashedly artificial that, as Meikle wrote, "the odor of the refinery seemed to linger" on each item.Not everyone appreciated the look, but it was indisputably a style, one fully grounded in the slippery nature of the material. Kartell's designs made it possible for people to believe that plastic, like traditional materials, had some noble essence.
But even Kartell had trouble creating a one-piece chair. For the factory to make a full-size chair, the molds had to be massive, the machinery needed to house and press them together even more so. Some designers came close but were always stymied by the problem of those cursed four legs. Marco Zanuso and Richard Sapper dreamed up a child's chair made of polyethylene for Kartell. The company could mold the back and seat all in one piece, but the legs had to be produced and attached separately. Joe Colombo hit the same wall when he designed an adult-sized chair for the company in 1967.
Panton's legless chair, however, posed fewer production challenges. It was a better fit for plasticâor at least for the state of plastics processing at the time.
The exact history of his chair is not well documented; Panton himself gave contradictory accounts of how it finally came about. What is known is that in the late '60s he finally found a partner willing to take up production of the'S chairâa Swiss company that made Herman Miller furniture under license. The company's owner wasn't wild about Panton's design, but his son, Rolf Fehlbaum, was. "It's interesting, it's new, it's exciting," Fehlbaum told his father, urging him to take it on.
The chair proved more challenging than Panton or his new partners had expected. For a few years they experimented with materials and processes,working closely with plastics manufacturers, who were eager to participate in what they all recognized was a groundbreaking project. In 1968, they found the perfect plastic for their project: a new, glossy hard polyurethane foam made by Bayer and called Baydur. Later that year, the company began producing the seat that would go down in design history.
Sleek, sexy, and a technical first, the Panton chair, as it came to be called, was an instant successâat least in the world of design. To Panton's enduring disappointment, the chair was never a huge commercial success; it was a little too weird for the average middle-class consumer with a living room furnished in American Colonial. Nonetheless, it quickly gained status as the iconic chair of the era, the embodiment of sixties exuberance and openness to experimentation. To Mathias Remmele, who curated a museum exhibit of Panton's work, the chair captured something even deeper: "It embodies the enthusiasm of an era in which society's faith in progress and in the supremacy of technology over matter was still largely unshaken."In this incarnation, plastic was cool. The chair graced the cover
They started out making auto accessories but soon gravitated toward more artistic endeavors. The Castellis recognized early on that plastic materials, unlike natural ones, "acquire an identity ... only by means of the project itself."Success hinged on the design. So they recruited topflight designers for even the most mundane objects. In Kartell's hands, flyswatters, juicers, ashtrays, lamps, and storage containers acquired an elegant beauty. A standing dustpan designed by Gino Colombini had such geometry and grace that it wound up in a number of design-museum collections.
The Castellis' genius was to take plastic at face value. Unlike so many American manufacturers, they didn't try to deploy it as a substitute for a natural material. They didn't rake it with a woodlike grain, stipple it with the pebbly texture of leather, or sprinkle it with glitter to give it the glow of gold. They let plastic be plastic. The products emerging from their Milan factory boasted bright primary colors, sleek surfaces, crisp Euclidian shapes, undulating curves. It was a style so unabashedly artificial that, as Meikle wrote, "the odor of the refinery seemed to linger" on each item.Not everyone appreciated the look, but it was indisputably a style, one fully grounded in the slippery nature of the material. Kartell's designs made it possible for people to believe that plastic, like traditional materials, had some noble essence.
But even Kartell had trouble creating a one-piece chair. For the factory to make a full-size chair, the molds had to be massive, the machinery needed to house and press them together even more so. Some designers came close but were always stymied by the problem of those cursed four legs. Marco Zanuso and Richard Sapper dreamed up a child's chair made of polyethylene for Kartell. The company could mold the back and seat all in one piece, but the legs had to be produced and attached separately. Joe Colombo hit the same wall when he designed an adult-sized chair for the company in 1967.
Panton's legless chair, however, posed fewer production challenges. It was a better fit for plasticâor at least for the state of plastics processing at the time.
The exact history of his chair is not well documented; Panton himself gave contradictory accounts of how it finally came about. What is known is that in the late '60s he finally found a partner willing to take up production of the'S chairâa Swiss company that made Herman Miller furniture under license. The company's owner wasn't wild about Panton's design, but his son, Rolf Fehlbaum, was. "It's interesting, it's new, it's exciting," Fehlbaum told his father, urging him to take it on.
The chair proved more challenging than Panton or his new partners had expected. For a few years they experimented with materials and processes,working closely with plastics manufacturers, who were eager to participate in what they all recognized was a groundbreaking project. In 1968, they found the perfect plastic for their project: a new, glossy hard polyurethane foam made by Bayer and called Baydur. Later that year, the company began producing the seat that would go down in design history.
Sleek, sexy, and a technical first, the Panton chair, as it came to be called, was an instant successâat least in the world of design. To Panton's enduring disappointment, the chair was never a huge commercial success; it was a little too weird for the average middle-class consumer with a living room furnished in American Colonial. Nonetheless, it quickly gained status as the iconic chair of the era, the embodiment of sixties exuberance and openness to experimentation. To Mathias Remmele, who curated a museum exhibit of Panton's work, the chair captured something even deeper: "It embodies the enthusiasm of an era in which society's faith in progress and in the supremacy of technology over matter was still largely unshaken."In this incarnation, plastic was cool. The chair graced the cover
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