Starck La Marie Chair Acrylic

The Italian design giant Kartell transformed plastic from the stuff of humble household goods into a staple of luxury design in the 1960s. Founded in Milan by Italian chemical engineer Giulio Castelli (1920–2006) and his wife Anna Ferrieri (1918–2006), Kartell began as an industrial design firm, producing useful items like ski racks for automobiles and laboratory equipment designed to replace breakable glass with sturdy plastic. Even as companies like Olivetti and Vespa were making Italian design popular in the 1950s, typewriters and scooters were relatively costly, and Castelli and Ferrieri wanted to provide Italian consumers with affordable, stylish goods.

They launched a housewares division of Kartell in 1953, making lighting fixtures and kitchen tools and accessories from colorful molded plastic. Consumers in the postwar era were initially skeptical of plastic goods, but their affordability and infinite range of styles and hues eventually won devotees. Tupperware parties in the United States made plastic storage containers ubiquitous in postwar homes, and Kartell’s ingenious designs for juicers, dustpans, and dish racks conquered Europe. Kartell designer Gino Colombini was responsible for many of these early products, and his design for the KS 1146 Bucket won the Compasso d’Oro prize in 1955.

Buoyed by its success in the home goods market, Kartell introduced its Habitat division in 1963. Designers Marco Zanuso and Richard Sapper created the K1340 (later called the K 4999) children’s chair that year, and families enjoyed their bright colors and light weight, which made them easy for kids to pick up and move. In 1965, Joe Colombo (1924–78) created one of Kartell’s few pieces of non-plastic furniture, the 4801 chair, which sits low to the ground and comprised of just three curved pieces of plywood. (In 2012, Kartell reissued the chair in plastic.) Colombo followed up on the success of the 4801 with the iconic 4867 Universal Chair in 1967, which, like Verner Panton’s S chair, is made from a single piece of plastic. The colorful, stackable injection-molded chair was an instant classic. That same year, Kartell introduced Colombo’s KD27 table lamp. Ferrierei’s cylindrical 4966 Componibili storage module debuted in 1969.

Kartell achieved international recognition for its innovative work in 1972, when a landmark exhibition curated by Emilio Ambasz called “Italy: The New Domestic Landscape” opened at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. That show introduced American audiences to the work of designers such as Gaetano Pesce; Ettore Sottsass, founder of the Memphis Group; and the firms Archizoom and Superstudio (both firms were among Italy's Radical design groups) — all of whom were using wit, humor and unorthodox materials to create a bracingly original interior aesthetic.

Castelli and Ferrieri sold Kartell to Claudio Luti, their son-in-law, in 1988, and since then, Luti has expanded the company’s roster of designers.

Kartell produced Ron Arad’s Bookworm wall shelf in 1994, and Philippe Starck’s La Marie chair in 1998. More recently, Kartell has collaborated with the Japanese collective Nendo, Spanish architect Patricia Urquiola and glass designer Tokujin Yoshioka, among many others. Kartell classics can be found in museums around the world, including MoMA, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. In 1999, Claudio Luti established the Museo Kartell to tell the company’s story, through key objects from its innovative and colorful history.

Find vintage Kartell tables, seating, table lamps and other furniture on 1stDibs.

Chairs are an indispensable component of your home and office. Can you imagine your life without the vintage, new or antique chairs you love?

With the exception of rocking chairs, the majority of the seating in our homes today — Windsor chairs, chaise longues, wingback chairs — originated in either England or France. Art Nouveau chairs, the style of which also originated in those regions, embraced the inherent magnificence of the natural world with decorative flourishes and refined designs that blended both curved and geometric contour lines. While craftsmanship and styles have evolved in the past century, chairs have had a singular significance in our lives, no matter what your favorite chair looks like.

“The chair is the piece of furniture that is closest to human beings,” said Hans Wegner. The revered Danish cabinetmaker and furniture designer was prolific, having designed nearly 500 chairs over the course of his lifetime. His beloved designs include the Wishbone chair, the wingback Papa Bear chair and many more.

Other designers of Scandinavian modernist chairs introduced new dynamics to this staple with sculptural flowing lines, curvaceous shapes and efficient functionality. The Paimio armchair, Swan chair and Panton chair are vintage works of Finnish and Danish seating that left an indelible mark on the history of good furniture design.

“What works good is better than what looks good, because what works good lasts,” said Ray Eames. 

Visionary polymaths Ray and Charles Eames experimented with bent plywood and fiberglass with the goal of producing affordable furniture for a mass market. Like other celebrated mid-century modern furniture designers of elegant low-profile furnishings — among them Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Finn Juhl — the Eameses considered ergonomic support, durability and cost, all of which should be top of mind when shopping for the perfect chair. The mid-century years yielded many popular chairs.

The Eameses introduced numerous icons for manufacturer Herman Miller, such as the Eames lounge chair and ottoman, molded plywood dining chairs the DCM and DCW (which can be artfully mismatched around your dining table) and a wealth of other treasured pieces for the home and office. 

A good chair anchors us to a place and can become an object of timeless appeal. Take a seat and browse the rich variety of vintage, new and antique chairs on 1stDibs today.