Eero Saarinen 'Tulip' Armchairs and Centro Progetti Tecno Round Table

Eero Saarinen (1910–61) absolutely hated clutter. "The undercarriage of chairs and tables in a typical interior makes an ugly, confusing, unrestful world,” the Finnish-American architect and industrial designer once said. “I wanted to clear up the slum of legs.” With the original Tulip armchair, he did just that, streamlining the standard four-legged piece into a graceful shape atop a single pedestal.

The 1957 design — which is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York — was one of Saarinen’s last; he died in 1961. Its sculptural shape displays the best of Saarinen, who referred to himself as a “form giver,” whether that form was a flower-shaped seat or the swooping curve of the Gateway Arch, a more than 600-foot-tall stainless-steel-clad concrete monument in St. Louis, Missouri, that he designed in the late 1940s.

The Tulip armchair was part of Saarinen’s Pedestal collection of armless chairs, stools, dining tables and more — a mid-century modernist exercise in simplifying. The series was designed for Knoll, which continues to produce it today. Visitors to the TWA Hotel, the 2019 reinvention of Saarinen’s iconic airport terminal, will find Tulip chairs dotting the structure.

Interestingly, the Tulip armchair’s shape suggests one single plastic form, but despite Saarinen’s many experiments to achieve this, it is actually constructed in two pieces: an aluminum frame obscured in a plastic finish and a fiberglass upper-shell seat. Two parts or one, it achieves Saarinen’s desired streamlined effect.

From his early start at his father’s boutique furniture and cabinetry atelier — Arredamenti Borsani (ABV) — Italian designer Osvaldo Borsani began to steadily dream to life the movement-inducing pieces that would eventually lead to him founding his innovative furniture company, Tecno, with his twin brother, Fulgenzio. 

Born in the commune of Varedo in northern Italy’s Lombardy region, Borsani studied at the Brera Academy in Milan — the same school attended by such luminaries as designer Piero Fornasetti and artist Lucio Fontana — as well as the Polytechnic University of Milan. He first worked for the family furniture-making firm, ABV, an atelier influenced by the more expressive and curvaceous wing of Art Deco design. Borsani took over Arredamenti Borsani in 1937.

With his stylish and technically innovative furniture, Borsani helped change the face of Italian design in the 1950s and ’60s. His sofas and chairs, featuring deeply upholstered seating and adjustable position settings, have an aura of optimism and efficiency that still seems fresh and lively today.

While he is today recognized as a master of mid-century modernist Italian furniture, Borsani is most famous these days for cofounding Tecno. (He and Fulgenzio also created Villa Borsani, a visionary mid-century estate cherished for its modern lines and exquisite custom furnishings.) 

When Borsani opened Tecno, an office-focused maker of industrial design, his design sensibilities had evolved toward furnishings with strong, simple forms enhanced by mechanical innovations, as with the P40 adjustable armchair.

When they were originally released, Tecno pieces like the P40 and the award-winning D70 sofa bed were acclaimed as cutting-edge, and they are still considered groundbreaking in their adaptability and functionality. The firm quickly garnered widespread acclaim for its tech-forward designs and quality craftsmanship.

Borsani would be Tecno’s lead designer for 30 years, while partnering on projects with the likes of architect Eugenio Gerli and fostering work by Vico Magistretti, Carlo De Carli, Robin Day and others.

Borsani designed pieces for Tecno until shortly before his death in 1985, when his daughter Valeria and her husband, Marco Fantoni, took over the creative work. 

Today, the family’s legacy is preserved by Borsani’s architect grandson Tommaso Fantoni, who, along with Norman Foster, curated a blockbuster retrospective of Osvaldo Borsani’s work at Milan’s Triennale Design Museum in 2018.

Find vintage Tecno chairs, tables, desks and other furniture on 1stDibs.