Shopping Guides Chairs - Iconic

Date Published:

12/06/2008

Credit: Jan Baldwin

Egg chair, by Arne Jacobsen, £2,630

You should recognise this chair. It's hard to mistake its all-consuming organic form, which threatens to swallow sitters whole. Best of all, it offers complete privacy from the back, so you can practice your best Bond villain impersonation without anyone seeing.

Design History
The Egg story began in the late 1950s, when Arne Jacobsen was commissioned to design the SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen. Left responsible for every part of the hotel, from the architecture down to the door handles, it was a dream job. Apart from the building itself, the project bore several design classics: including the Swan chair, the Drop chair and, of course, the Egg chair, which dominated the hotel lobby.

About The Designer
Born in Copenhagen in 1902, Arne Jacobsen is the undisputed great Dane of furniture design. There were many highlights to his career, which included some groundbreaking architecture and product design, but his golden period was arguably the 1950s. He worked on revolutionary housing and school projects before designing one of his most famous products, the Ant chair, in 1951 (that's the chair famously straddled by Christine Keeler). The Egg and Swan chairs were launched in 1960, completing the iconic round-up, and securing his status as one of the century's most influential designers. He died in 1971.

What It's Made Of And How?
The shell is polyurethane foam with glass fibre reinforcement and features an adjustable tilt fitting which can be tweaked to suit the weight of the sitter. Its distinctive base is injection-moulded aluminium, but the pièce de résistance is the beautiful hand-stitched upholstery. Each chair takes up to two days to make and comes in a range of fabrics by Danish textile king Kvadrat (including those pictured which are the Happy (left) and Prince (right) 504 fabrics by Tord Boontje) or you can pick your own. It also comes in leather.

Is The Real Thing Worth The Money?
Copies vary in quality, but nothing can beat a bona fide Egg chair. As a representative for the licensed manufacturer and distributor, Fritz Hansen, confirms, one of the chair's biggest selling points is the quality of its construction, which you don't get with a £640 copy. It takes several days, and 1,300 stitches, to make one chair, so if you take good care of your Egg, it could last as long as you. In fact, some second-hand 1960s originals, still in surprisingly good nick, are often sold for more than a new Egg. Copies of the Egg can be sold in the UK (as long as the wording of the products is different), but elsewhere, Fritz Hansen continues to battle against the plagiarists, bringing up to 100 cases to court a year.

What Will This Chair Say About You?
Your bottom is cupped by one of the most celebrated chairs of all time, which makes it, by association, almost as iconic as the chair itself.

Stockists
020 7837 2030 or www.fritzhansen.com