OH, MAN. Here’s a fun thing about me: I currently have TWENTY-TWO CHAIRS inside my 1,100 square foot apartment, where I live alone. I absolutely do not need and cannot possibly fathom why or how one person can somehow amass TWENTY-TWO CHAIRS, but, well…I just love them. (To be fair – and also to maybe prove that I am mostly sane – I am in the midst of cutting ties with about half of them because I’d like to enjoy activities like “walking without bumping into something” and “opening my closet door without completing a round of calisthenics.”)
But all this chair hoarding means one thing: when it comes to seating, I know my stuff. So today, I want to walk you through the actual names of 20 iconic chairs – some you’ll know, and some may be new to you – along with some fun facts, so you can talk to your friends like you’re one of the experts on Antiques Roadshow. (“Please stop talking about furniture all the time,” your friends will beg, but they’ll love you anyway, because that’s what friends are for.) And to be clear, we’re NOT talking Adirondack chairs, or Peacock chairs, or Butterfly chairs, or any of the chairs that everyone can name – these are the design deep cuts. YOU’RE GONNA LEARN SOMETHING AND YOU’RE GONNA LIKE IT. (I hope.) Let’s go, yeah?
Up Series 2000
Starting this off with one of my all-time favorites: the Up Chair (or the Up5, if you want to get really specific), which was designed by Gaetano Pesce in 1969. It’s so modern and fun and cheery and playful and…oh wait, it was actually designed to look like “a female figure tied to a ball-shaped ottoman, symbolizing the shackles that keep women subjugated.” DIDN’T SEE THAT COMING, DID YA?
Womb
Some fun history: Eero Saarinen (yeah, like, the guy who figured out the whole “tulip base” thing) first designed the Womb Chair at the request of Florence Knoll, who was tired of sitting in “one-dimensional” and “narrow chairs.” “I want a chair I can sit in sideways or any other way I want to sit in it,” Knoll said, and like…girl, SAME HERE. Florence gets it, you know?
So the Womb Chair – originally just called the “No. 70” – was finished and released in the 1940s, but it didn’t adopt the now-famous nomenclature until Saarinen hit the media circuit with this talking point: “It was designed on the theory that a great number of people have never really felt comfortable and secure since they left the womb.” NOW YOU KNOW.
Klismos
KLISMOS! I’m sure you’ve seen them in the wild for years, but the actual name may be new to you. Think of Klismos chairs like the Windsor chairs of ancient Greece – there are tons of different styles and colors and cuts, but the actual shape (flared leg, curved back, concave backrest) remains the same. This type of chair dropped out of favor for over ~2000 years (NBD), but Klismos popped back on the ~design~ scene during the 18th-century neoclassical movement and slowly worked their way back into homes around the world. (If you really wanna break your brain this morning: it’s kind of wild to imagine chair shapes from today still being popular in the year 4022, right?)
Ekstrem
I know that Ekstrem chairs are a bold statement piece that can inspire some pretty adverse reactions – to no one’s surprise, I am on team #obsessed – but are you ready for the plot twist? THEY WERE DESIGNED TO BE ERGONOMIC. The designer, Terje Ekstrøm, wasn’t just trying to lean into the 80s postmodern movement, as many assume – he actually made the prototype for the Ekstrem in the 1970s in an attempt to create a chair that’d be BETTER for how people actually need to sit, instead of relying on how chairs of the 40s and 50s allowed people to sit. It took him about 12 years (!!!) to find a manufacturer willing to take a chance on the Ekstrem, and now they’re an iconic piece of design history.
Etcetera
You know when people just like, have it? (Like how Jonathan Safran Foer, a guy who didn’t even want to be a writer, turned his Princeton senior thesis into one of the biggest debut book deals of all time?) That’s what happened with the Etcetera chair – the designer, Jan Ekselius, created a prototype as part of a workshop at the Royal College of Art in London in the 1970s, and it quickly became THE hot ticket item of the decade and a go-to piece for decorators worldwide. (Above is the “lounge chair” version – it’s my personal favorite – but if you ever see an Etcetera chair with a more compressed shape, that’s the traditional “easy chair” option.)
Panton
This may be one of the most ubiquitous chairs on the list – we’ve all seen the cheaper knockoffs (usually marketed as “S chairs,” because of the shape) AND the newer wicker interpretations, right? Let me fill you in on some fun backstory (you know, so you can annoy your friends by spouting off esoteric design facts all the time): in the late 1950s, plastic was picking up steam in postwar Europe and Verner Panton was OBSESSED with the new material, because it could be moulded into any shape AND mass-produced. He really wanted to figure out how to make a chair that was just one piece, but it took 15-20 “no’s” from other furniture manufacturers before Vitra decided to take the plunge and produce Panton’s dream chair. It took 10 prototypes to nail down the construction – plus, the actual materials used in each chair shifted a bit as technology advanced) – and now there’s a huuuuge secondary market for all kinds of rare, vintage Panton chairs.
Camaleonda
Fun fact: Mario Bellini’s Camaleonda sofa was one of the first-ever modular sofas to break through to the mainstream! It actually made its debut in a 1970 exhibition at MOMA in New York, so it was in high demand by the time it was actually brought to market a few years later. It was originally only in production through 1979, but it was brought back in 2020 and is now being manufactured once again. (PS. I’ve been taking Duolingo Italian for about a year, and can finally identify that “Camaleonda” is a portmanteu of “camaleonte,” which means “chameleon,” and “onda,” which means “wave.” Thank you, Duolingo owl, for bullying me into learning vocabulary words every day.)
Pumpkin
This is the first of a few of Pierre Paulin designs and it has a GREAT story. In the late 1960s, the French government wanted to breathe new life into a slowly-dying design industry, so the Minister of Culture ended up hiring Paulin to design the President’s private residence in Elysée Palace. (Can you imagine anything like this happening in America today? I can’t.) At the time, the chairs were referred to as “Elysée chairs” (you know, because of the location) and after becoming a cult favorite, the Pumpkin chairs we know and love were finally reissued in 2007.
Jaymar
First: I have one of these in my house, guys! Mine is clad in a leopard-print fabric (“shocker,” said absolutely no one) and it’s UNBELIEVABLY comfortable (in addition to being my cat’s favorite place to snooze). Jaymar’s a Canadian brand that’s been around since the 1950s, but these 1990s-era chairs – sometimes referred to as “cantilever chairs” or “Jaymar tongue chairs,” though they’re inspired by the work of Louis Durot – picked up a TON of steam within the last 4 years as postmodern-style furniture has returned to the mainstream. Jaymar chairs are still kind of affordable (mine was about $350 in 2019, which is a steal compared to some of the earlier $5,000-$10,000 chairs!) but becoming more and more popular/valuable by the day. If you’re into this style of furniture (and you like, actually want to enjoy sitting on said furniture), this is a great option.
P3
So simple, so striking, SO GOOD. The P3 was a 1960s design by Tito Agnoli, a Peruvian-born architect who moved to Italy for school and worked unde
James Home Renovation 