100 Years of Verner Panton – Designer and Visionary

Verner Panton – Colour, Form and an Idea No Manufacturer Wanted

Verner Panton (13 February 1926 – Gamtofte, Denmark) studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen and briefly worked as an assistant to Arne Jacobsen. He soon broke away from everything Danish design represented at the time: natural materials, traditional craftsmanship and restrained aesthetics. Panton embraced plastic, colour and flowing curves. He envisioned furniture that looked like sculpture while being suitable for industrial production.

The Road to the Panton Chair

The idea for the Panton Chair emerged in the late 1950s: a one-piece cantilever chair made entirely of plastic, with no separate legs, no feet and no interruption in its form. No manufacturer wanted to produce it. It was considered too complex, too risky and too unconventional. It was only when Rolf Fehlbaum of Vitra discovered the chair on Panton's terrace that serious interest arose. He made Vitra's development team available, and after years of refinement, the Panton Chair entered serial production in 1967 – eight years after the initial concept. It became the world's first one-piece cantilever chair manufactured from a single piece of material.

Organic Forms and the Psychology of Colour

Panton explored colour psychology extensively – not as an academic discipline, but as a powerful design tool. For him, colour was never mere decoration; it was a structural element of architecture and interior design. This philosophy is most clearly expressed in his immersive room installations, including the legendary Visiona exhibition created for Bayer at the Cologne Furniture Fair in 1970. Vibrant reds, purples and oranges merged walls, floors and ceilings into sculptural environments. The Amoebe Chair, the Cone Chair and the Panton Chair all follow the same principle: organic forms shaped not only by function, but by the desire to create a completely new relationship between the human body and space.

Vitra and Panton

The collaboration between Verner Panton and Vitra became one of the defining design partnerships of the 20th century. To this day, Vitra continues to manufacture the Panton Chair, the Panton Chair Classic, the Panton Junior, the Amoebe Chair and a selection of miniatures from Panton's work as authorised originals, preserving their original form, materials and design language.

Authentic Originals from an Authorised Retailer

The products featured on this page are genuine Vitra originals, not reproductions. As an authorised Vitra retailer, pro office offers Verner Panton's design classics in authentic quality, complete with free shipping and a best price guarantee.