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Tube Chair
Iconic Designs

Tube Chair

About the Design

Created from minimal materials in 1969 by Italian industrial designer and architect Cesare “Joe” Colombo (1930–71), the Tube chair is a sculptural representation of comfort and efficiency. Fitting to its name, the sprawling seat is made from four PVC plastic tubes of different diameters cushioned with polyurethane foam and fastened together with metal clasps. All of the components can be neatly tucked inside of each other, like a Russian doll, making it easy to move and stow away. 

Lauded for such unconventional seating as the Elda chair and the Joe Glove armchair, Colombo started out as a painter and studied architecture at the Polytechnic University in Milan before putting his avant-garde spin on product design. Today, he is revered as a master of modern Italian design thanks to his provocative modular furniture that embodies the future-forward spirit of the Space Age. Colombo believed that furniture should be “interchangeable and programmable,” and the Tube chair’s arrangement of cylinders is as playful as it is integral to adaptability and convenience, properties its maker intended for this pioneering work.

Like his Additional Living System seating in 1967, the individual tubes are designed to be assembled into different configurations in order to best accommodate the sitter. The piece, which was initially accompanied by a cotton drawstring bag for portability, was originally produced by the Italian furniture company Flexform and since 2016 has been available through Cappellini.

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Joe Colombo Tube Chair for Flexform 1969 / Milan, Italy
By Joe Colombo
Located in PARIS, FR
Italian architect and designer Joe Colombo responded to the changing social conditions of the 1960s by radically reinventing furniture forms and creating innovative interior environm...
Category

Vintage 1960s Italian Space Age Lounge Chairs

Materials

Stainless Steel

Original Tube Chair by Joe Colombo for Flexform, Italy, 1969-1979
By Joe Colombo
Located in PARIS, FR
The tube chair was designed in 1969 by Italian designer Joe Colombo for Flexform. The tube chair perfectly encapsulates the era in which it was conceived by its use of new material...
Category

Vintage 1970s Italian Modern Chaise Longues

Materials

Fabric, Upholstery, Plastic

Joe Colombo Tube Chair
By Flexform, Joe Colombo
Located in Brooklyn, NY
Original first-issue Tube lounge chair, designed by Joe Colombo for Flexform. A highly collectible example of Italian postmodern design by the vision...
Category

20th Century Italian Post-Modern Lounge Chairs

Materials

PVC

1960s Tube Chair by Joe Colombo for Flexform
By Flexform, Joe Colombo
Located in Paris, FR
Modular chair with plastic tubes, foam and covered by a polyurethane coat. Produced by Flexform, with its shipment bag.
Category

Vintage 1960s European Space Age Chaise Longues

Materials

Metal

Related Items
1960s Italian 'Elda' Joe Columbo Swivel White Fibreglass & Leather Lounge Chair
By Joe Colombo, Comfort, Italy
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I have a pair of this iconic chairs but both listed separately. 1960s Italian 'Elda' swivel lounge chair designed by Joe Colombo in 1963 (1930-1971 ) and manufactured by Comfort Italy. This is one of the most well-known, space-age and futuristic designs from this innovative and forward-thinking Italian designer and named in honour of his wife. The white fibreglass shell is fitted with seven deep padded black leather cushions which provide comfort from all sides. The four back cushions are designed to hug your back completely including your neck and head. - "A modernist wing-backed chair with a womb-like plastic frame upholstered in thick leather pads" The white body is made from fibreglass with the seated area from fitted smooth leather which the cushions clip on to. I have had the cushions re-made at great expense by an experienced upholsterer who used the originals as templates. She re-used the original chrome clips on every cushion to ensure they're securely fastened to the leather skin and in the correct place/position. There are some small scuffs to the original leather skin and one tear which are hardly noticeable and to be expected from a chair over 60 years old. The cushions are in perfect condition. There is a small crack at the very base of the shell on the back which I have illustrated in one of the images apart from that it's in very good condition. The chair specifically the lower base section is very heavy where it is weighted to ensure it's counter-balanced whenever anyone is sitting in it. It does not wobble at all and spins around and around freely. An interesting piece from Architectural Digest about the background of the chair and why it's a favourite with designers: "After Italian designer Joe Colombo visited a shipyard in 1963 that made fiberglass hulls for boats, inspiration struck: Why not use that same hand-molding technique for the base of a chair? The results—a roomy, futuristic armchair in which seven detachable cushions hook into a molded plastic shell on a rotating base—would become an icon. He named it after his wife, Elda. Colombo moved a white fiberglass and black leather model—produced by Italian brand Comfort in 1965—into his own Milan apartment. And soon, after the design debuted at the Eurodomus 1 fair in Genoa, others followed suit. The strange chair (further documented in Joe Colombo: Designer: Catalogue Raisonné 1962–2020, a new publication by Silvana Editoriale) captured the 1960s space-age sensibility of fashion designers like Paco Rabanne and Pierre Cardin, and was on its way to the silver screen, where AD100 designer Luis Laplace first saw it. “In the 1969 film Hibernatus, a man sitting in the Elda armchair explains the challenges and benefits of hibernation,” recalls Laplace of his early-childhood encounter with the seat. He and partner Christophe Comoy now live with one in Paris. Elda went on to star in the 1977 Bond flick The Spy Who Loved Me, in the 1970s series Space: 1999, and in the 2012 movie The Hunger Games, proving Laplace’s point: “It oozes power.” The appeal is wide-ranging. Designer Hollie Bowden, who snapped up a worn-in Elda in Morocco for a project in Ibiza, calls it “super comfy and quite bosslike.” Meanwhile, designer Jonathan Adler, who lives with one in his Manhattan home, calls the seat “a strange mix of plastic futurism and organic brainlike channel upholstery in a commanding scale.” Or, as he has deemed it, “executive squish.” Dimensions: W: 95cm D: 92cm H: 93cm Seat Height: 40cm I ALSO HAVE ANOTHER IDENTICAL 'ELDA' CHAIR IF YOU'RE LOOKING FOR A PAIR LISTED ON THE RETRO LIVING WEBSITE. Some information about the designer Joe Columbo from 1st Dibs "He died tragically young, and his career as a designer lasted little more than 10 years. But through the 1960s, Joe Colombo proved himself one of the field’s most provocative and original thinkers, and he produced a remarkably large array of innovative furniture, lighting and product designs. Even today, the creations of Joe Colombo have the power to surprise. Cesare “Joe” Colombo was born in Milan, the son of an electrical-components manufacturer. He was a creative child — he loved to build huge structures from Meccano pieces — and in college he studied painting and sculpture before switching to architecture. In the early 1950s, Colombo made and exhibited paintings and sculptures as part of an art movement that responded to the new Nuclear Age, and futuristic thinking would inform his entire career. He took up design not long after his father fell ill in 1958, and he and his brother, Gianni, were called upon to run the family company. Colombo expanded the business to include the making of plastics — a primary material in almost all his later designs. One of his first, made in collaboration with his brother, was the Acrilica table lamp (1962), composed of a wave-shaped piece of clear acrylic resin that diffused light cast by a bulb concealed in the lamp’s metal base. A year later, Colombo produced his best-known furniture design, the Elda armchair (1963): a modernist wingback chairwith a womb-like plastic frame upholstered in thick leather pads. Portability and adaptability were keynotes of many Colombo designs, made for a more mobile society in which people would take their living environments with them. One of his most striking pieces is the Tube chair (1969). It comprises four foam-padded plastic cylinders that fit inside one another. The components, which are held together by metal clips, can be configured in a variety of seating shapes. Tube chairs generally sell for about $9,000 in good condition; Elda chairs for about $7,000. A small Colombo design such as the plastic Boby trolley — an office organizer...
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1960s Italian 'Elda' Joe Columbo Swivel White Fibreglass & Leather Lounge Chair
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An Iconic 1960s Italian 'Elda' swivel lounge chair designed by Joe Colombo in 1963 (1930-1971 ) and manufactured by Comfort Italy. This is one of the most well-known, space-age and futuristic designs from this innovative and forward-thinking Italian designer and named in honour of his wife. The white fibreglass shell is fitted with seven deep padded black leather cushions which provide comfort from all sides. The four back cushions are designed to hug your back completely including your neck and head. - "A modernist wing-backed chair with a womb-like plastic frame upholstered in thick leather pads" The white body is made from fibreglass with the seated area from fitted smooth leather which the cushions clip on to. I have had the cushions re-made at great expense by an experienced upholsterer who used the originals as templates. She re-used the original chrome clips on every cushion to ensure they're securely fastened to the leather skin and in the correct place/position. There are some scuffs to the leather skin which are hardly noticeable and to be expected from a chair over 60 years old. The cushions are in perfect condition. There is a small chip at the very base of the shell on the back which I have illustrated in one of the images apart from that it's in very good condition. The chair specifically the lower base section is very heavy where it is weighted to ensure it's counter-balanced whenever anyone is sitting in it. It does not wobble at all and spins around and around freely. An interesting piece from Architectural Digest about the background of the chair and why it's a favourite with designers: "After Italian designer Joe Colombo visited a shipyard in 1963 that made fiberglass hulls for boats, inspiration struck: Why not use that same hand-molding technique for the base of a chair? The results—a roomy, futuristic armchair in which seven detachable cushions hook into a molded plastic shell on a rotating base—would become an icon. He named it after his wife, Elda. Colombo moved a white fiberglass and black leather model—produced by Italian brand Comfort in 1965—into his own Milan apartment. And soon, after the design debuted at the Eurodomus 1 fair in Genoa, others followed suit. The strange chair (further documented in Joe Colombo: Designer: Catalogue Raisonné 1962–2020, a new publication by Silvana Editoriale) captured the 1960s space-age sensibility of fashion designers like Paco Rabanne and Pierre Cardin, and was on its way to the silver screen, where AD100 designer Luis Laplace first saw it. “In the 1969 film Hibernatus, a man sitting in the Elda armchair explains the challenges and benefits of hibernation,” recalls Laplace of his early-childhood encounter with the seat. He and partner Christophe Comoy now live with one in Paris. Elda went on to star in the 1977 Bond flick The Spy Who Loved Me, in the 1970s series Space: 1999, and in the 2012 movie The Hunger Games, proving Laplace’s point: “It oozes power.” The appeal is wide-ranging. Designer Hollie Bowden, who snapped up a worn-in Elda in Morocco for a project in Ibiza, calls it “super comfy and quite bosslike.” Meanwhile, designer Jonathan Adler, who lives with one in his Manhattan home, calls the seat “a strange mix of plastic futurism and organic brainlike channel upholstery in a commanding scale.” Or, as he has deemed it, “executive squish.” Dimensions: W: 95cm D: 92cm H: 93cm Seat Height: 40cm I ALSO HAVE ANOTHER IDENTICAL 'ELDA' CHAIR IF YOU'RE LOOKING FOR A PAIR LISTED ON THE RETRO LIVING WEBSITE. Some information about the designer Joe Columbo from 1st Dibs "He died tragically young, and his career as a designer lasted little more than 10 years. 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