Peacock Chair: how a colonial chair won over Hollywood, the Black Panthers, and Scandinavian design

Some objects cross eras, styles, and meanings as if they were living beings, capable of shedding their skins and changing destinies. The Peacock Chair is one such object. Born in a Philippine prison in the early 20th century, it rose to the throne of Hollywood divas, became a symbol of African-American movements, and finally emerged as an iconic cover star. This wicker chair is more than just furniture; it’s a mythical figure, a sign.

The first known image of the Peacock Chair dates back to 1914. In the photo, a female prisoner sits in a lavish chair with a wide back resembling peacock feathers in Bilibid Prison, Manila. Titled “Jail Bird in a Peacock Chair,” the image captures the chair’s dual nature: exotic and decorative, yet deeply social. The chairs were made by prisoners to be sold to American tourists while the Philippines were under U.S. colonial rule. From there, the chair began circulating in both public and private spaces frequented by the American middle class – verandas, hotels, and photography studios.

Its wicker weave, light construction, and coolness compared to solid wood made it perfect for the airy, sunlit environments of the early 20th century. Porches and patios became symbols of affluence and modernity during this time. Wicker became the ideal setting for posing: practical, scenic, and always decorative. Not surprisingly, these chairs were also called “posing chairs” or “photographer’s chairs.”

With the rise of cinema and advertising photography, the Peacock Chair became synonymous with exotic glamour. Its tall, fan-shaped, often intricately decorated wicker back framed the actress’s face like a halo. From portraits of Loretta Young to those of Marilyn Monroe and Brigitte Bardot, the chair became a totemic object – a “throne of beauty,” an instrument of seduction and decoration. The 1974 film Emmanuelle, featuring Sylvia Kristel half-naked on a Peacock Chair, cemented its status as an erotic and bohemian icon.

Yet, there’s another side to the story. In 1967, Huey Newton, leader of the Black Panthers, posed on the Peacock Chair, holding a rifle in one hand and a spear in the other. This powerful image transformed the chair into a symbol of Black pride and anti-colonial rebellion. Shifting from a decorative object to a throne of resistance, the Peacock Chair once again became a sign of identity – an oppositional visual narrative replicated in album covers like Uncle Jam Wants You by Funkadelic (1979) and across various Afrofuturist aesthetics. Even T’Challa’s throne in the 2018 film Black Panther explicitly drew on this visual legacy.

In the 1950s, while the Peacock Chair continued its journey through photographic sets, Italian design reclaimed its structural essence. In 1950, Franco Albini and Bonacina created the Margherita armchair, a modernist reinterpretation of the Peacock. The shapes became more fluid, and the design more essential, yet the use of Indian rush, the hourglass base, and the enveloping back remained. Amid postwar reconstruction, Albini transformed the colonial legacy into an elegant bourgeois form, blending craftsmanship with mass production. The Margherita also served as a “high” response to the proliferation of cheap wicker furniture: a light, airy chair with a clear design intent.

In 2009, Israeli designer created a new version of the Peacock Chair for Cappellini. No longer made from wicker, it was crafted from folded felt, like sculptural origami. Its shape evoked the peacock’s tail but evolved into an abstract pattern blending fashion and architecture, tradition and innovation. This chair, still carrying the legacy of its name, transformed it into a graphic symbol and a poetic gesture. Made from a single felt panel sewn and curled around a metal frame, this postmodern Peacock Chair celebrated the metamorphosis of the chair as a symbolic, aesthetic, and narrative object.

In the 20th-century design scene, another noteworthy chair, also called the Peacock Chair, emerged. Designed in 1947 by Danish maestro Hans J. Wegner, it offered a sophisticated reinterpretation of classic Windsor chairs. Its curved wooden slats fanned out into the backrest and culminated in a wider central element that supported the shoulder blades. This detail, reminiscent of a peacock’s tail opening, led designer Finn Juhl to name it the Peacock Chair.

While the Filipino wicker chair was decorative, exotic, and theatrical, the Danish Peacock Chair was rational, understated, and ergonomic. The former was born in a colonial context and absorbed by pop culture, while the latter embodied Nordic modernism with its emphasis on simplicity, comfort, and organic beauty. Though profoundly different, both chairs transformed the act of sitting into a statement of style.

From a Philippine prison to a modernist living room, from the African-American revolution to the Bee Gees album cover, the Peacock Chair has endured a century of history, crossing styles, social classes, and ideologies. It has been both colonial and decolonized, bourgeois and revolutionary, erotic and spiritual. Perhaps it is precisely this formal and semantic ambiguity that makes it eternal, for each era could reinterpret it and make it its own.

Today, we find it in entirely different settings, yet it remains one of the most complex and fascinating designs of the 20th century, weaving together fibers and stories.

Opening image: Photo Mitch from Flickr