Verner Panton, Heart Cone chair for Vitra

VERNER PANTON (Denmark, 1926 - 1998) for Vitra.
Heart cone chair, designed in 1959.
Red wool fabric chair.
Signs of wear and patina due the age.
Produced by Vitra.
Measurements: 89 x 103 x 60 cm. Seat height: 40 cm.

The Heart Cone belongs to the Cone Chair family (1958-1960), one of Verner Panton's first international successes. Its reissue and continued production by Vitra underscore the company's role as publisher and custodian of the legacy of one of the most influential designers of the 20th century. In this piece, Panton exemplarily materializes the principles that define his work: formal experimentation, a break with orthodox functionalism, and a conception of design as an emotional and sculptural experience. Its unmistakable inverted heart silhouette questions the traditional typology of the chair and unambiguously affirms its status as a sculptural object: expressive, symbolic and almost anthropomorphic, something exceptional in the late 1950s. The Heart Cone thus embodies the transition from a piece of furniture understood solely as a function to an object charged with meaning and emotion.

Considered one of the most influential personalities in furniture design at the end of the 20th century, Verner Panton created a wide variety of innovative and futuristic designs throughout his career, especially constructed in plastic and brightly colored. Most of his best-known designs are still in production. Verner attended the Odense Technical School and then studied architecture at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, where he graduated in 1951. In the early years of his career, between 1950 and 1942, he worked in the architectural studio of Arne Jacobsen. In 1955 he opened his own architecture and design studio, becoming famous with his furniture based on geometric shapes, manufactured by the company Plus-linje. In the late 1950s, his chair designs, with no legs and no discernible back, became increasingly unconventional. In the 1960s Panton began a close collaboration with the Vitra firm, which culminated in 2000 with Panton's retrospective exhibition at the Vitra Design Museum. He is currently represented at the DesignMuseum in London and MoMA in New York, among many others.