One of the most influential Danish designers of the 20th century, Verner Panton led a career filled with “firsts” and is perhaps most readily associated with the radical embrace of new materials and methods that defined much of the 1960s.

Panton was born in 1926 on the island of Fünen, Denmark. After serving in the military during World War II, Panton attended the Technical University of Odense, and then graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Art in 1951 with a degree in architecture. From 1950 to 1952, he worked under Arne Jacobsen, who served as a significant mentor to the designer. Panton followed his stint with Jacobsen for a series of road trips throughout Europe, in which he used his VW van as a mobile draughtsman’s studio and established significant connections in the international design community. In 1955, the celebrated Danish manufacturer Fritz Hansen launched the first production of a Panton design, the Bachelor Chair, followed by the Tivoli Chair.

One of Panton’s first major commissions was to redesign the inn that belonged to his parents, the Kom-igen inn. Begun in 1958, Panton’s redesign led to the development of his Cone Chair, and his work resulted in ongoing cooperation with multiple Danish manufacturers of furniture, textiles, and lighting. It was during this same decade that Panton became fascinated with developing a chair that could be made from a single element; his work towards this goal would eventually become the “S-chair,” or Stacking chair. This acclaimed design was finally realized in 1960 and was the world’s first single-form, injection-molded plastic chair. (It would later be produced by Thonet, as the first-ever cantilevered chair of molded plywood.) That same year, Panton designed the first inflatable seating made from plastic for his design for Norway’s Astoria Hotel restaurant.

Panton would go on to realize many major commissions, including the interior design of the Spiegel Publishing House and the 1979 Pantorama exhibition in Basel. Among his later commissions were the Vilbert Chair for IKEA and the Swatch Art Clock Tower for the Atlanta Olympic Summer Games in 1995. He passed away in 1998, and was celebrated with a retrospective at the Vitra Design Museum in 2000. He was a four-time winner of the International Design Award, among numerous other awards.