Rare Ball Chair by Eero Aarnio for Adelta
View Similar Items
Rare Ball Chair by Eero Aarnio for Adelta
About the Item
- Creator:Eero Aarnio (Designer)
- Attributed to:Adelta (Manufacturer)
- Design:
- Dimensions:Height: 49.22 in (125 cm)Width: 43.31 in (110 cm)Depth: 35.44 in (90 cm)Seat Height: 14.97 in (38 cm)
- Materials and Techniques:
- Place of Origin:
- Period:1980-1989
- Date of Manufacture:1980
- Condition:Wear consistent with age and use.
- Seller Location:L'Escala, ES
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU1982316337162
Ball Chair
When Eero Aarnio's unapologetically sculptural Ball chair (or Globe chair) debuted at the 1966 International Furniture Fair in Cologne, buyers from 30 countries placed orders for their homes. Celebrities like Sammy Davis Jr. and Grace Kelly were among the early purchasers, as were royal figures like the shah of Iran. A German news broadcast featured the futuristic Ball chair — an inviting molded-fiberglass orb, hollowed out to house a foam-filled fabric seat, affixed to a disk-shaped aluminum base — while a New York Times reporter’s witty dispatch from the fair suggested that the seating on display was “designed more for laughs than for comfort.”
Laughable or not, the distinctive chair brought Aarnio (b. 1932), a Finnish interior designer and furniture maker, instant commercial success, even as it rattled the modern design world. A precursor to his aesthetically similar Bubble chair, it resulted in Aarnio being forever associated with 1960s Pop art and space fever. And indeed, the brightly colored piece’s sleek pod-like shape seems tailored for sci-fi epics. Nevertheless, Aarnio has stated, “I had no intention to create either ‘pop’ or ‘space-age’ design — as many people label my work. . . . My intention was purely functional, to create the most practical form for this new material.”
After drafting a modest sketch of the Ball chair in 1963, Aarnio was uncertain about sharing the idea with furniture companies. By then, he had his own firm in Helsinki and numerous prizes from design competitions. But he was pivoting from the natural materials traditionally associated with Scandinavian furniture, working instead like Verner Panton, with synthetics and exploring playful but utilitarian forms.
Aarnio feared that big furniture firms wouldn’t embrace the otherworldly Ball chair concept, so he spent several weekends in an old elementary school’s woodshop, hand-building the first prototype from plywood and water-soaked newspaper. A subsequent version, made from fiberglass and upholstered with gray fabric that Aarnio painted red, was far sturdier, and Asko, where he was freelancing at the time, began manufacturing the design. Today, Eero Aarnio Originals makes the Ball chair, and it’s featured in movies, magazines and museums all over the planet, even as it appears to have arrived from another solar system.
Eero Aarnio
“I always look ahead, never back,” Finnish design legend Eero Aarnio has been quoted as saying. A leading innovator of modern furniture design, Aarnio has long embraced a bold, playful, confident and colorful style several steps ahead of his time.
For his 1954 entrance test for the Institute of Industrial Arts in Helsinki, Aarnio created a whimsical painting of a man reading a newspaper in a red, curved chair whose silhouette foreshadowed Aarnio’s Ball chair of 1963. That spherical seat skyrocketed him to design fame, and decades later, it is still recognized as one of the world’s most futuristic designs.
Born in 1932 to a house painter and a seamstress, Aarnio has always had a cheerful disposition and an independent spirit. He went his own way early on: After just two years at Asko, the big Scandinavian furniture company that originally produced his Ball chair, Aarnio established his own studio in 1962.
Over the next decade, the young visionary made an indelible mark on the world. Open-minded and entrepreneurial, Aarnio embraced the aesthetics, materials and technologies of the Swinging Sixties, working with a new generation of plastics and molding them into fluid, organically shaped, brightly hued forms.
Introduced at the 1966 Cologne Furniture Fair, the pod-like fiberglass Ball chair soon adorned the homes of movie stars and royalty, graced magazine covers around the world and was featured in films and ads. The groundbreaking seat originally came in orange, white, black, yellow and red and could be ordered with a telephone installed in it. Yet this designer of the future, as he was known in the 1960s, has always insisted that he didn’t deliberately seek to be associated with the decade’s sci-fi aesthetic.
“I had no intention to create either pop or Space Age design — as many people label my work,” Aarnio declares in one of the essays included in Eero Aarnio — Designer of Colour and Joy, a book jointly created by the Design Museum and publisher WSOY to accompany 2016’s “Eero Aarnio” exhibition.
The show featured a number of Aarnio’s objects, including his iconic Ball, Pastil (1967), Bubble (1968), Tomato (1971) and Pony (1973) chairs. These were joined by lesser-known seating and other objects like the rattan Juttujakkara, or mushroom, stool (1960); the sculptural Double Bubble lamp (2000), with which Aarnio first explored the possibilities of rotation-cast plastic; and the three-legged Rocket (1995) and Baby Rocket (2006) stools, both parts of a collection produced by Artek after Tom Dixon, the company’s creative director from 2004 to 2009, discovered the original piece in Aarnio’s kitchen.
“Aarnio expanded the whole idea of what constitutes furniture,” explained Suvi Saloniemi, the Design Museum’s chief curator. “His significance as a designer is crystallized in the liberation of form that he has introduced by discovering the properties of plastic as the material of a designer. His furniture is sculpture-like and eye-catching, but the pieces are always utilitarian at the same time.”
Find an extraordinary range of vintage Eero Aarnio chairs, tables and other furniture on 1stDibs.
- Rare Lamp Ball by André Ricard for Metalarte 1970sBy André Ricard, Metalarte SpainLocated in L'Escala, ESBeautiful and rare lamp ball by André Ricard for Metalarte Spain, 1970s. White perspex in two part. In perfect vintage condition.Category
Mid-20th Century Spanish Table Lamps
MaterialsPlastic
- Leather Campaign Folding Chair by Valenti, 1960sBy ValentiLocated in L'Escala, ESBeautiful and rare leather campaign folding chair manufactured by Valenti in 1960s. This chair is particularly comfortable and very practical because it folds. Ideal for a small office, its turned bamboo...Category
Mid-20th Century Spanish Chairs
MaterialsBrass
$1,562 Sale Price20% Off - Set of Two Gianni Moscatelli Swivel 'Poney' Chairs for Formanova, Italy 1970'sBy Formanova, Gianni MoscatelliLocated in L'Escala, ESAmazing set of two Gianni Moscatelli Swivel 'Poney' Chairs for Formanova, Italy 1970's. These two chairs have an amazing color velvet fabric in deep blue petroleum color that is in v...Category
Mid-20th Century Italian Swivel Chairs
MaterialsStainless Steel
- Rare Pair of 1970s Green Velvet Armchairs BauhausLocated in L'Escala, ESBeautiful and rare pair of 1970s green velvet armchairs manufactured in Italy, green velvet new, foam new, in perfect vintage condition.Category
Mid-20th Century Italian Armchairs
MaterialsChrome
- Rare Chishen Chiu Extensible Armchair Flexible Love circa 2000Located in L'Escala, ESVery rare Chishen Chiu extensible armchair Flexible Love manufactured in early 2000s. This project is all about community and sharing social interactions...Category
Early 2000s European Armchairs
MaterialsWood, Paper
- Brutalist Oak Smoking Chairs, 1960sLocated in L'Escala, ESThis oak brutalist smoking chair dates from the 1960s. Very stable. The design is based on the antique cock fighting chair. We have six in ...Category
Mid-20th Century Persian Chairs
MaterialsOak
$2,170 / item
- Tipi Chair by Eero Aarnio for AdeltaBy Eero Aarnio, AdeltaLocated in Dorchester, MACreated in 2002 by the Finnish designer Eero Aarnio for the German manufacturer Adelta, the Tipi Chair is an imaginative interpretation of what might consti...Category
Early 2000s German Chairs
MaterialsSteel
- Rare Eero Aarnio Birch Armchair for Asko, FinlandBy Eero Aarnio, AskoLocated in Echt, NLBeautiful Birch Armchair in very good condition. Designed by Eero Aarnio and produced by Asko, Finland. The chair is made of bent plywood which is lamin...Category
20th Century Finnish Mid-Century Modern Chairs
MaterialsBirch, Fabric, Bouclé, Bentwood
- Eero Aarnio Red Pony ChairBy Eero Aarnio, AdeltaLocated in Madrid, ESPony chair upholstered with red textile. This iconic seat was originally designed by Finnish designer Eero Aarnio in 1972. It features a metal frame and foam upholstery, covered with...Category
Late 20th Century Finnish Mid-Century Modern Lounge Chairs
MaterialsSteel
- Puppy S in White by Eero Aarnio for MagisBy Eero Aarnio, MagisLocated in Brooklyn, NYCreated by Eero Aarnio, master of Scandinavian design culture and innovator on the international scene ever since the sixties, Puppy is a little dog as imagined by the great designer...Category
21st Century and Contemporary Italian Figurative Sculptures
MaterialsPlastic
$135 / item - Puppy M in White by Eero Aarnio for MagisBy Eero Aarnio, MagisLocated in Brooklyn, NYCreated by Eero Aarnio, master of Scandinavian design culture and innovator on the international scene ever since the sixties, Puppy is a little dog as imagined by the great designer...Category
21st Century and Contemporary Italian Figurative Sculptures
MaterialsPlastic
$215 / item - Puppy S in Orange by Eero Aarnio for MagisBy Eero Aarnio, MagisLocated in Brooklyn, NYCreated by Eero Aarnio, master of Scandinavian design culture and innovator on the international scene ever since the sixties, Puppy is a little dog as imagined by the great designer...Category
21st Century and Contemporary Italian Figurative Sculptures
MaterialsPlastic
$135 / item
Recently Viewed
View AllRead More
The 21 Most Popular Mid-Century Modern Chairs
You know the designs, now get the stories about how they came to be.
The Ball Chair, Eero Aarnio’s Space Age Masterpiece, Was Almost Never Made
Now considered emblematic of 1960s mod aesthetics, the Finnish designer's famous creation was far from an overnight success.