Skip to main content

Eero Aarnio Dining Room Sets

Finnish, b. 1932

“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.

to
Height
to
Width
to
Depth
to
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
71
23
17
14
12
Creator: Eero Aarnio
Set of 2 Cognac XO Chairs by Eero Aarnio for Asko
By Eero Aarnio, Asko
Located in Telgte, DE
Set of 2 Cognac XO Chairs by Eero Aarnio for Asko – Perfect Addition or Standalone Pieces for Design Enthusiasts These two original Cognac XO Chairs by Eero Aarnio for Asko are true...
Category

Mid-20th Century Finnish Space Age Eero Aarnio Dining Room Sets

Materials

Fabric, Fiberglass

Set of 4 Cognac XO Chairs & Matching Table by Eero Aarnio for Asko
By Eero Aarnio, Asko
Located in Telgte, DE
Set of 4 Cognac XO Chairs & Matching Table by Eero Aarnio for Asko An iconic piece of Mid-Century design – this set of four Cognac XO Chairs and the matching table, designed by Eero...
Category

Mid-20th Century Finnish Space Age Eero Aarnio Dining Room Sets

Materials

Fabric, Fiberglass

Related Items
Iconic Eero Aarnio Small Black Mushroom Stool
By Eero Aarnio
Located in New York, NY
He mushroom is one of Eero’s oldest designs and in its fibreglass form is part of the same design family that includes the ball chair, Pastil and Tomato. It can be used as a stool or...
Category

2010s Finnish Modern Eero Aarnio Dining Room Sets

Materials

Fiberglass

Eero Aarnio Small Walnut Parabel Table
By Eero Aarnio
Located in New York, NY
The Parabel was designed in 1993 by Eero Aarnio, and first shown at the International Furniture Fair in Cologne, Germany in January 2002. The table is made of fibreglass and comes in...
Category

2010s Finnish Modern Eero Aarnio Dining Room Sets

Materials

Maple

1970’s Kantarelli Dining Table by Eero Aarnio
By Eero Aarnio
Located in Los Angeles, CA
Space Age Kantarelli dining table designed by Eero Aarnio, 1970. In excellent vintage condition.
Category

1970s Finnish Space Age Vintage Eero Aarnio Dining Room Sets

Materials

Fiberglass, Lacquer

1970s Rosewood Tulip Dining Table & Six Chairs Set By Eero Saarinen for Knoll
By Eero Saarinen
Located in Shepperton, Surrey
An original 1970 vintage tulip dining set by Eero Saarinen for Knoll. Saarinen's tulip design combines grace with practicality. The rare Rio...
Category

Mid-20th Century Finnish Scandinavian Modern Eero Aarnio Dining Room Sets

Materials

Metal

Eero Saarinen for Knoll Tulip Set Including Large Oval Table and 6 Chairs 1970s
By Eero Saarinen, Knoll
Located in Buffalo, NY
Eero Saarinen for Knoll Tulip Set Including Large 78" Oval Table and 6 tulip Chairs , c.1970s,,, Classic modernist dining room set consisting of large 78" oval dining table and six t...
Category

1970s American Mid-Century Modern Vintage Eero Aarnio Dining Room Sets

Materials

Aluminum, Steel

Midcentury Space Age Coffee Table UPO, Eero Aarnio, Finland, 1970s
By Eero Aarnio
Located in Praha, CZ
- Rare type - Very practical - Marked.
Category

1970s Finnish Mid-Century Modern Vintage Eero Aarnio Dining Room Sets

Materials

Metal

Eero Aarnio Small Natural Parabel Table
By Eero Aarnio
Located in New York, NY
The Parabel was designed in 1993 by Eero Aarnio, and first shown at the International Furniture Fair in Cologne, Germany in January 2002. The table is made of fibreglass and comes in...
Category

2010s Finnish Modern Eero Aarnio Dining Room Sets

Materials

Maple

Dining Table & Chairs Set by Boris Tabacoff for Mobilier Modular Moderne, 1970's
By Boris Tabacoff
Located in Antwerp, Antwerp
A spectacular ‘Scimitar’ dining set designed by Bulgarian designer Boris Tabacoff for Mobilier Modular Moderne (MMM) in the 70’s. The chairs and table have a heavy chromed steel base...
Category

1970s Bulgarian Space Age Vintage Eero Aarnio Dining Room Sets

Materials

Chrome

Space Age Dining Set with Six Cobra Chairs by Giotto Stoppino and Matching Table
By Giotto Stoppino
Located in Milano, IT
Table set - 6 dining chairs and Table - Giotto Stoppino Born 1926, Giotto Stoppino was one of the most relevant representative of the Italian Space Age movement. He worked as an ar...
Category

1970s Italian Space Age Vintage Eero Aarnio Dining Room Sets

Materials

Metal, Steel, Chrome

Mod Wicker Side Table Att. to Eero Aarnio
By Eero Aarnio
Located in New York, NY
Cool Mod style pod table in woven wicker, attributed to Eero Aarnio. The side table is in very good, original estate condition, it shows an inconsequential bruise on the underside, n...
Category

Mid-20th Century Finnish Mid-Century Modern Eero Aarnio Dining Room Sets

Materials

Wicker

Copacabana by Eero Aarnio for Adelta
By Eero Aarnio, Adelta
Located in Wien, AT
Three Copacabana side tables by Eero Aarnio for Adelta. The tables are unused and have been in storage for the last few decades. The set consists of two white & one red element. They...
Category

1990s Finnish Space Age Eero Aarnio Dining Room Sets

Materials

Fiberglass

Copacabana by Eero Aarnio for Adelta
Copacabana by Eero Aarnio for Adelta
H 11.82 in W 35.44 in D 16.54 in
Carlo Scarpa Cognac Leather “Kentucky” Dining Chair for Bernini, 1977, Set of 5
By Bernini, Carlo Scarpa
Located in Vicenza, IT
Set of 5 mod. 783 “Kentucky” dining chairs, designed by Carlo Scarpa for the Italian manufacturer Bernini in 1977. Structure made from oak and walnut timber. Seats and backrest made from cognac leather. Excellent vintage condition. Carlo Scarpa designed this chair for the “Scuderia” series., the last project he made for Bernini. The architect took inspiration from the “shaker” movement. He designed the chair slightly inclined at the front. This feature allows you to swing backward (until you lean on a wall) and remain in balance. Born in Venice on June 2nd, 1906, Carlo Scarpa began working at a very early age. A year after he had first qualified as an architect in 1926, he began working for the Murano glassmakers Cappellin & Co. in a consultative capacity. From 1927, Carlo Scarpa began to experiment with the Murano glass, and this research not only gave him excellent results here but would also inform his progress for many years to come. Between 1935 and 1937, as he entered his thirties, Carlo Scarpa accepted his first important commission, the renovation of Venice’s Cà Foscari. He adapted the spaces of this stately University building that stands on the Grand Canal banks, creating rooms for the Dean’s offices and a new hall for academic ceremonies; Mario Sironi and Mario De Luigi were charged with doing the restoration work on the frescos. After 1945, Carlo Scarpa found himself constantly busy with new commissions, including various furnishings and designs for the renovation of Venice’s Hotel Bauer and designing a tall building in Padua and a residential area in Feltre, all worth mentioning. One of his key works, despite its relatively modest diminished proportions, was the [bookshop known as the] Padiglione del Libro, which stands in Venice’s Giardini di Castello and clearly shows Scarpa’s passion for the works of Frank Lloyd Wright. In the years which were to follow, after he had met the American architect, Scarpa repeated similar experiments on other occasions, as can be seen, in particular, in the sketches he drew up in 1953 for villa Zoppas in Conegliano, which show some of his most promising work. However, this work unfortunately never came to fruition. Carlo Scarpa later created three museum layouts to prove pivotal in terms of how twentieth-century museums were set up from then on. Between 1955 and 1957, he completed extension work on Treviso’s Gipsoteca Canoviana [the museum that houses Canova’s sculptures] in Possagno, taking a similar experimental approach to the one he used for the Venezuelan Pavilion at [Venice’s] Giardini di Castello which he was building at the same time (1954-56). In Possagno Carlo Scarpa was to create one of his most significant ever works, which inevitably bears comparison with two other museum layouts that he was working on over the same period, those of: – Galleria Nazionale di Sicilia, housed in the Palazzo Abatellis in Palermo (1953-55) – Castelvecchio in Verona (1957- 1974), all of which were highly acclaimed, adding to his growing fame. Two other buildings, which are beautifully arranged in spatial terms, can be added to this long list of key works that were started and, in some cases, even completed during the nineteen fifties. After winning the Olivetti award for architecture in 1956, Scarpa began work in Venice’s Piazza San Marco on an area destined to house products made by the Industrial manufacturers Ivrea. Over the same period (1959-1963), he also worked on the renovation and restoration of the gardens and ground floor of the Fondazione Querini Stampalia in Venice, which many consider one of his greatest works. While he busied himself working on-site at the Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Carlo Scarpa also began work building a villa in Udine for the Veritti family. To shed some light on the extent to which his work evolved over the years, it may perhaps be useful to compare this work with that of his very last building, villa Ottolenghi Bardolino, which was near to completion at the time of his sudden death in 1978. Upon completion of villa Veritti over the next ten years, without ever letting up on his work on renovation and layouts, Scarpa accepted some highly challenging commissions, working on the Carlo Felice Theatre in Genoa and another theatre in Vicenza. Towards the end of this decade, in 1969, Rina Brion commissioned Carlo Scarpa to build the Brion Mausoleum in San Vito d’Altivole (Treviso), a piece he continued to work on right up until the moment of his death. Nevertheless, even though he was totally absorbed by work on this mausoleum, there are plenty of other episodes which can offer some insight into the final years of his career. As work on the San Vito d’Altivole Mausoleum began to lessen from 1973, Carlo Scarpa started building the new headquarters for the Banca Popolare di Verona. He drew up plans that were surprisingly different from the work he was carrying out at the same time on the villa Ottolenghi. However, the plans Carlo Scarpa drew up, at different times, for a monument in Brescia’s Piazza della Loggia commemorating victims of the terrorist attack on May 28th, 1974, make a sharp contrast to the work he carried out in Verona, almost as if there is a certain hesitation after so many mannered excesses. The same Pietas that informs his designs for the Piazza Della Loggia can also be seen in the presence of the water that flows through the Brion Mausoleum, almost as if to give a concrete manifestation of pity in this twentieth-century work of art. Carlo Scarpa has put together a highly sophisticated collection of structures, occupying the mausoleum’s L-shaped space stretching across both sides of the old San Vito d’Altivole cemetery. A myriad of different forms and an equally large number of different pieces, all of which are separate and yet inextricably linked to form a chain that seems to offer no promise of continuity, rising up out of these are those whose only justification for being there is to bear the warning “si vis vitam, para mortem,” [if you wish to experience life prepare for death] as if to tell a tale that suggests the circle of time, joining together the commemoration of the dead with a celebration of life. At the entrance of the Brion Mausoleum stand the “propylaea” followed by a cloister which ends by a small chapel, with an arcosolium bearing the family sarcophagi, the main pavilion, held in place on broken cast iron supports, stands over a mirror-shaped stretch of water and occupies one end of the family’s burial space. The musical sound of the walkways teamed with the luminosity of these harmoniously blended spaces shows how, in keeping with his strong sense of vision, Carlo Scarpa could make the most of all of his many skills to come up with this truly magnificent space. As well as a great commitment to architectural work, with the many projects which we have already seen punctuating his career, Carlo Scarpa also made many equally important forays into the world of applied arts. Between 1926 and 1931, he worked for the Murano glassmakers Cappellin, later taking what he had learned with him when he went to work for the glassmakers Venini from 1933 until the 1950s. The story of how he came to work on furniture design is different, however, and began with the furniture he designed to replace lost furnishings during his renovation of Cà Foscari. The later mass-produced furniture started differently, given that many pieces were originally one-off designs “made to measure.” Industrial manufacturing using these designs as prototypes came into being thanks to the continuity afforded him by Dino Gavina, who, as well as this, also invited Carlo Scarpa to become president of the company Gavina SpA, later to become SIMON, a company Gavina founded eight years on, in partnership with Maria Simoncini (whose own name accounts for the choice of company name). Carlo Scarpa and Gavina forged a strong bond in 1968 as they began to put various models of his into production for Simon, such as the “Doge” table, which also formed the basis for the “Sarpi” and “Florian” tables. In the early seventies, other tables that followed included “Valmarana,” “Quatour,” and “Orseolo.” While in 1974, they added couch and armchair “Cornaro” to the collection and the “Toledo” bed...
Category

1970s Italian Mid-Century Modern Vintage Eero Aarnio Dining Room Sets

Materials

Walnut, Leather, Plastic

Previously Available Items
Dining Table & Chairs Set by Eero Aarnio for Upo Furniture, 1970s
By Eero Aarnio
Located in Karis, Nyland
The rare set of 4 stacking chairs with the matching table designed by Eero Aarnio for Upo Furniture, 1970s. White plastic, metal crossbars beneath the table top to make it sturdy. ...
Category

1970s Finnish Mid-Century Modern Vintage Eero Aarnio Dining Room Sets

Materials

Metal

Midcentury Dining Room Set by Eero Aarnio for UPO, Finland, 1971-1972
By Eero Aarnio
Located in Doornspijk, NL
Eero Aarnio, best known for the "Ball Chair" he designed in 1966, also is the creator of this Space Age dining set. All items carry the stamp: "UPO Furniture Upo Osakeyhtio Plasti...
Category

1970s Finnish Mid-Century Modern Vintage Eero Aarnio Dining Room Sets

Materials

Plastic

Eero Aarnio Dining Set for UPO, Finland
By Eero Aarnio
Located in Doornspijk, NL
Eero Aarnio, best known for the "Ball Chair" he designed in 1966, also is the creator of this Space Age dining set. All items carry the stamp: "UP...
Category

1970s Finnish Mid-Century Modern Vintage Eero Aarnio Dining Room Sets

Materials

Plastic

Eero Aarnio Dining Set for UPO, Finland
Eero Aarnio Dining Set for UPO, Finland
H 29.53 in W 19.69 in D 19.69 in
Eero Aarnio Dining Room Set for UPO, Finland, 1971-1972
By Eero Aarnio
Located in Doornspijk, NL
Eero Aarnio, best known for the "Ball Chair" he designed in 1966, also is the creator of this Space Age dining set. All items carry the stamp: ...
Category

1970s Finnish Mid-Century Modern Vintage Eero Aarnio Dining Room Sets

Materials

Plastic

Eero Aarnio dining room sets for sale on 1stDibs.

Eero Aarnio dining room sets are available for sale on 1stDibs.
Questions About Eero Aarnio Dining Room Sets
  • 1stDibs ExpertFebruary 1, 2024
    Whether or not Eero Aarnio Ball chairs are comfortable or not is largely a matter of personal opinion. When the chair debuted in 1966, the New York Times reporter who saw it at the International Furniture Fair in Cologne suggested that the seating on display was "designed more for laughs than for comfort." However, the distinctive chair brought Aarnio instant commercial success. Today, many people still find the inviting foam-filled fabric seat inside its molded-fiberglass orb to be as comfortable to sit on as it is pleasing to the eye. Shop an assortment of vintage Eero Aarnio Ball chairs on 1stDibs.

Recently Viewed

View All