Verner Panton preferred experimentation to "beautiful platitude"

Verner Panton caused a sensation with his pioneering approach to furniture and lighting design. For our mid-century modern series, we profile the Danish designer whose colourful pieces and interiors define an era.

With their vibrant colours and undulating shapes, Verner Panton's Heart Cone and Panton chairs are among the most iconic design pieces to come out of the 1950s and '60s.

Verner Panton, who also created architecture and interiors, had a unique design language and commitment to industrial manufacture that made him stand out from the other designers of the time.

"Panton deliberately pursued projects using plastic, plexiglass, steel and foam rubber, with bold, vibrant colours," author and Royal Danish Academy professor Ida Engholm told Dezeen.

"And whereas his design colleagues in Denmark were dedicated to cultivating traditional craftsmanship, Panton was committed to creating products that were 100 per cent industrially manufactured, ready to go straight from the mould to the international mass market."

Though he's best known for designs that were more vivid and experimental than much of the streamlined wooden furniture of the time, Verner Panton began his career by working with some of Denmark's most established design names.

Born in Brahesborg-Gamtofte in Denmark in 1926, he studied at the Technical University of Odense before attending the Royal Academy of Arts, Copenhagen, to study architecture.

Verner Panton learned "never giving up" from Arne Jacobsen

During his time at the Royal Academy and after graduating, Verner Panton worked for another mid-century modern master, architect and designer Arne Jacobsen, on pieces including the iconic Ant chair.

He respected the work of his fellow Dane, though Verner Panton saw Jacobsen's design as "a little too tidy".

"The older I become, the more respect I have for Arne Jacobsen, although our ways of thinking differed in many ways," Verner Panton later said. "When you consider everything that Arne Jacobsen achieved in many different fields you realise that he has no equal."

"Of course his skills were accompanied by talent, energy, economy and luck," he added.

"And perhaps everything was a little too tidy. But I have never learned as much from anyone as I did from Arne Jacobsen, including the ability to feel uncertain and never giving up."

Verner Panton also had a connection to Poul Henningsen, another leading figure of Danish design, through his marriage to Henningsen's stepdaughter, Tove Kemp.

Though the marriage didn't last long, Verner Panton would develop a friendship with Henningsen that lasted until the other designer died in 1967.

"He was very good friends with many of the great Danish designers of the time and admired their work, but he was more inspired and fascinated by new materials and technologies, so he chose to take a different path," Verner Panton's daughter, Carin Panton, told Dezeen.

"He remained close friends with them throughout his life, including Nanna Ditzel, Poul Henningsen and Hans Wegner."

While he may be best known for his furniture and interior designs today, Verner Panton was a creative who explored many different fields.

His first venture into commercial design was a vision for a button-less shirt. After selling the patent to a shirt factory, Verner Panton bought a Volkswagen minibus, which he turned into a "mobile draughtsman's office" and used to travel around Europe.

Bachelor chair designed for "the single lifestyle"

In 1955 he introduced his first commercial seating design, the Bachelor chair. Its frame was made from tubular steel, with legs that form an inverted V.

The chair, which came in fabric or suede upholstery and was produced by Danish furniture brand Fritz Hansen, was well suited for the time period in which it was launched.

"As the name suggests, it was designed with the single lifestyle in mind, and the portable chair fitted right into a young nomadic lifestyle or as a space saver in the cramped flats of the 1950s and '60s," said Engholm and Anders Michelsen in their book Panton – Environments, colours, systems, patterns.

Verner Panton's attitude to creativity encouraged innovation and saw him create a number of designs that were new to their time.

"A less successful experiment is preferable to a beautiful platitude," he once declared.

Among his successful experimental designs is Kom-Igen, an inn managed by his father that Panton transformed into an example of "total design" in 1958. This was a defining aspect of the mid-century modern designers, who were often polymaths, creating buildings as well as their interiors and furniture.

For Kom-Igen (Come Again in Danish) Panton created an extension that was constructed from load-bearing steel columns with a glass facade and crowned with a roof terrace.

True to his experimental style, Panton divided its large central room into smaller sections by using geometrically patterned fabric that hung from the ceiling. Five different shades of red were used for the interior.

"People must have come in and been stunned because nothing was really red in the 1950s," Carin Panton said. "They called it the Red Ruby."

Cone chair's upside-down display created a stir

Kom-Igen also featured Verner Panton's Cone chair, which takes its name from its conical shape. After the success of the restaurant, the chair was exhibited at tradefair Købestaevnet in 1959, where it drew massive attention as it was displayed upside-down on the ceiling.

"Experience shows that this fair attracts incredible crowds of people and they never get to see anything other than each other's backs and shoulders," Verner Panton said. "So, let's place everything on the ceiling."

In 1959, Verner Panton added to the Cone chair line with the Heart Cone chair, which opened up into the shape of a heart while keeping the comfort of the original Cone design.

The designer would eventually take his experiments in seating even further with the Panton chair, which became an international sensation.

Its design followed from his wooden S chair, which he designed in 1955 and which was produced by Thonet.

Though it has a similar shape, the sculptural Panton chair, created in 1958, was instead made in fibreglass. Produced by Swiss furniture brand Vitra, with whom Verner Panton often worked after moving to Basel in 1963, it made history as the first all-plastic chair made in one piece with a cantilever design.

Throughout his career, Verner Panton continued to move between different fields. The designer submitted an entry for the international competition for the Centre Pompidou in France but his design, for an amorphic building with a facade of steel rings, was lost in the mail and never considered by the jury.

His interior design fared better, with the designer creating joyful, bright-hued rooms for a variety of clients. These include the colour-saturated Der Spiegel publishing house in Germany.

Verner Panton gave the magazine's offices a complete makeover, creating a reception space with red and purple hues and ceilings with textile-covered pyramids to absorb sound. Each floor had its own colour, and patterns covered the walls as well as the striking psychedelic ceiling above the office's swimming pool.

The offices also featured clusters of shiny, half-moon-shaped Flowerpot lamps, which Verner Panton later put into production with design brand Louis Poulsen. They are among many Verner Panton pieces still in production and known as design classics today.

Among the designer's later projects is the Circus building in central Copenhagen, whose interior he transformed with an explosion of colour in 1984, and the Erco offices in London, for which he designed a plastic three-dimensional wall covering.

Completed in 1997, it was one of his last projects. Verner Panton passed away in Copenhagen in 1998 at the age of 72.

"Panton's designs reflect his era, marked by student protests, a rebellion against conventions, the rise of counterculture, the influence of psychedelic art, and a focus on freedom of expression – all of which opened up space for experimentation," Engholm concluded.

"Throughout his career, my father was very interested and fascinated in materials and their creative potential," Carin Panton said.

"For him, it wasn't just about inventing a new formal language," she added. "The production-related possibilities these materials offered were just as important. I think that his approach is still very relevant today."

The main illustration is by Vesa S.

Mid-century modern

This article is part of Dezeen's mid-century modern design series, which looks at the enduring presence of mid-century modern design, profiles its most iconic architects and designers, and explores how the style is developing in the 21st century.

This series was created in partnership with Made – a UK furniture retailer that aims to bring aspirational design at affordable prices, with a goal to make every home as original as the people inside it. Elevate the everyday with collections that are made to last, available to shop now at made.com.

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