Verner Panton spent many years thinking about how to produce a plastic chair moulded in one piece. A practically impossible challenge with the materials and production times of those years, this chair remained without a manufacturer until Vitra entered the stage. Known at the time as Fehlbaum, the firm worked in collaboration with Herman Miller in Basel. In the words of Marianne Panton:

"I met Verner in 1961 and we moved to Basel 1962. I started working with him as his assistant right from the beginning, right after we met. Now the time passed by, but even after my husband died I continued promoting his designs and ideas, which he hadn't finished and which were not in production.
"I met Verner in 1961 and we moved to Basel in 1962. I started working as his assistant right from the beginning, just after we met. The first prototype, which is now part of the Vitra Design Museum collection, was realised in the late '50s, but it was made in a thermoplastic resin and it was no good for sitting on. My husband had been looking for a producer for a long time because back then the right material didn't exist. The tools and everything were also too expensive, but most of all nobody really believed in the project.
Before Verner left Denmark, he bought an old Porsche that we then travelled around Europe in, carrying around the thermoplastic prototype looking for a producer. We visited Milan and my husband went to meet De Padova, who was very impressed by his idea. De Padova suggested that Verner go to the South of France where a meeting was scheduled with Herman Miller and their European partners. There Verner met Willi Fehlbaum, who showed some interest in the chair. The others said it was more like a piece of sculpture than a chair. At that time, however, we couldn't really find the right material and the project was too expensive. So it still took many years from that moment until it was actually finished.
A few years later Rolf came to our house and saw the prototype chair and started thinking about how to produce it. It has been a long process."

This is when the chair came to life. In 1966 its development was planned, in 1967 a polyester version was produced with fibreglass reinforcement, and between 1968 and 1971 it was developed in polyurethane foam (Baydour). It immediately became an icon that occupied the front pages of magazines and also entered our homes. Since the advent of its production in polypropylene in 1999, it has become more economically accessible and has breathed life into a collection of objects including a version for kids, the Panton Junior. The Panton Chair was created by a designer who was able to see things from another perspective, who had a clear idea of light and colour, and who conceived something that can inspire a different way of thinking about the body's relationship with the chair-object.
Giulia Guzzini