Verner Panton

Born in Denmark in 1926, Verner Panton studied at Odense Technical College before enrolling at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen as an architecture student. He worked from 1950 to 1952 in the architectural firm of Arne Jacobsen, and founded an independent studio for architecture and design in 1955. His furniture designs for the firm Plus-linje attracted attention with their geometric forms. In the following years Panton created numerous designs for seating furniture and lighting. His passion for bright colours and geometric patterns manifested itself in an extensive range of textile designs. Panton's interior installations have attained legendary status. The most famous examples are the "Visiona" ship installations for the Cologne Furniture Fair in 1968 and 1970, the Spiegel publishing headquarters in Hamburg, and the Varna restaurant in Aarhus. Panton's collaboration with Vitra began in the early 1960s, when the firm decided to develop what became his best-known design, the 1967 Panton Chair. Verner Panton died in 1998 in Copenhagen.