"Sitting should also be fun – like playing – an exciting experience."
--Verner Panton

In 1959 Percy von Halling-Koch, a successful businessman responsible for the Unika-Vaev textile company, saw Panton’s groundbreaking "Cone" chairs in a restaurant in Denmark. Bowled over by the unique form, Halling-Koch founded the Plus-linje company within Unika-Vaev to market Panton’s new work.


Verner Panton's sketches of the Cone and Heart chairs. From the Panton archives of the Vitra Design Museum.

This line made its debut in the Danish magazine Mobilia in August of 1961 and immediately began to realign people’s expectations about how furniture should be designed. Used to the exquisite, yet traditional, Danish cabinetmaker trade, people initially had a hard time grasping Panton’s futuristic seats that possessed none of the signs they usually associated with chairs- for instance, four legs, or a four-sided seat. Panton’s Plus-linje furniture bounded into new realms of geometry, toying with a sharp, inverted conical structure perched atop a low metal base. His "Heart Cone" chair was one of the first indications of how the Pop movement would later use common universal symbols in furniture design. The second line within the series was built around his "Modular" chair. This chair was an upholstered circular seat set on a bouquet of chrome legs that came out from the center. Other chrome arms and backs could be added like stalks to create an entire series from this one idea. With the Plus-linje series Panton also introduced materials that would not even become viable for mass production for many years. His inflatable plastic stools were sold by the thousands, but could never be shipped because they constantly deflated.

The Plus-linje showroom, from the Pfister Furnishing Company in Zurich (1960), recreated for the R exhibition, featured all the elements of the Plus-linje collection together. The textiles that Panton created for the walls, floor and ceiling were a hypnotically repeating black and white pattern that allowed the ethereal elements of the line – the plexiglass structures, and the lean wire frames – to appear and disappear as you surveyed the room. His "Topan" lamps hung characteristically low, hidden between the chairs and allowing a second mirrored reflection of the upholstery.

R Gallery's Plus-Linje installation.


Verner Panton in his Heart chair.


Rare "Easy Chair C1" for Plus-Linje, circa 1959. From an edition of between 60-100.


The Plus-linje showroom, circa 1960. Photo courtesy of Marianne Panton


Stool for Plus-Linje, Denmark, 1960.


R Gallery's Plus-Linje installation.