Verner Panton
Designer of plastic and colour.
Verner Panton made the Panton Chair, the first chair moulded from a single piece of plastic, and vibrantly coloured interiors.
Verner Panton was born in 1926 in Gamtofte on Funen in Denmark. He first trained as a building technician and then studied architecture at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. In the early 1950s he worked for Arne Jacobsen and was involved in the work on the Ant chair.
Panton set up on his own in 1955 and attracted attention with experimental ideas. In 1958 he created an all-red interior for the Komigen inn on Funen, featuring the conical Cone Chair. He wanted to break with traditional Danish furniture in teak and oak and saw the future in plastic, metal and bold colours.
His best-known work, the Panton Chair, was designed around 1960. It is a cantilevered chair in a single piece of moulded plastic, without legs in the traditional sense. It took several years to find a manufacturing method, and the chair only went into production in 1967 in collaboration with Vitra. It is regarded as the first chair moulded from a single piece of plastic. He also designed lamps such as the Flowerpot and the VP Globe.
In the 1960s Panton settled in Switzerland. He created psychedelic total environments in which floors, walls, ceilings and furniture merged in bold colours. The best known are Visiona 2, an installation for the chemical company Bayer at the Cologne furniture fair in 1970, and the interiors of the magazine Der Spiegel's offices in Hamburg, whose canteen is now preserved in a museum.
Panton died in Copenhagen in 1998. His vividly coloured forms became symbols of the pop culture of the 1960s and 1970s. Many of his furniture designs and lamps are still in production, and he is seen as one of the most innovative designers in the history of Danish design.