Like no other name, Verner Panton stands for visionary furniture design and a historic shift in colour and form. Ten years after Panton’s last exhibition in Germany, the Danish Embassy is showing a previously inaccessible collection of rare original furniture and objects for the first time to a broad public. Also on view are young Danish designers like Busk+Hertzog, Tine Mouritsen, Kvadrat and Hay Furniture, demonstrating how great Panton’s influence has been on contemporary design.

Ranging from Panton’s early work such as the Tivoli Chair (1955), his first serially manufactured chair that he designed for the famous Copenhagen Tivoli Amusement Park, up to his late work with the Panto Swing (1994), the main focus of the exhibition is on rare and less well-known furniture and fabrics. In the exhibition, Panton’s work is vividly contrasted with other influential works of international furniture design. Furniture manufacturers such as Vitra, Verpan, & tradition, and Grid Montana showcase re-editions of famous Panton classics, demonstrating how timeless and modern this furniture is even today.

_{Living Tower, Verner Panton © Vitra}

With the exhibition, curator Ida Engholm aims to show that Panton’s fame is not merely based on the success of one or the other design “hit” like the famous S chair (the Panton Chair), the first cantilevered chair made from a single piece of plastic, but on his extensive experimentation with colours and form.

The exhibition is framed by a programme illuminating the influence of design on modern society. Valuable prizes – including a flight to Copenhagen with an overnight stay at a design hotel – can be won in a quiz contest on Panton’s work.

An exhibition by the Royal Danish Embassy in cooperation with Ida Engholm, Copenhagen Center for Design Research. The exhibition includes loans from the Copenhagen Museum of Industry Design and the Berlin private collector André Barss.

Free admission