The 10 Most Famous Design Chairs, from the Thonet to the Panton

The chair is the set piece of design: four legs, a back, and a century and a half of answers. From Thonet's Viennese cafés to Panton's plastic monobloc, each of these ten shifted a limit — technical, formal or industrial. All can still be found, in reissue or vintage.

1. The Thonet No. 14 — Michael Thonet, 1859

Six pieces of steam-bent beech, ten screws, two nuts: the No. 14 ships flat-packed — thirty-six chairs in a one-cubic-metre crate — to cafés the world over. Fifty million sold before 1930: the first piece of furniture of the industrial age, and still the chair of the bistro. See the original and its alternatives →

2. The Panton — Verner Panton, 1967

The first chair in the world moulded from a single piece of plastic, in full cantilever — ten years of trials before Vitra pulled it off. The pop S of Danish design, still in production, still just as improbable seen in profile. See the original and its alternatives →

3. The Wishbone CH24 — Hans Wegner, 1949

Born of portraits of Danish merchants seated on Ming chairs, the CH24 weaves a paper-cord seat beneath a Y-shaped back. Made without interruption by Carl Hansen & Søn since 1950 — more than a hundred operations, the cording done by hand. See the original and its alternatives →

4. The Series 7 — Arne Jacobsen, 1955

A shell of plywood cinched at the waist, set on four slender tubes: the best-selling chair in the history of Danish furniture. And one of the most photographed — the 1963 portrait of Christine Keeler was taken on a copy, which says everything about its success. See the original and its alternatives →

5. The Eames DSW — Charles & Ray Eames, 1950

The organic shell born of the MoMA "Low-Cost Furniture" competition, set on a wooden base: the first plastic chair made in large series. The whole Eames programme is held in this object — the best, for the most people, at the lowest price. See the original and its alternatives →

6. The Cesca B32 — Marcel Breuer, 1928

The Bauhaus cantilever reconciled with tradition: chromed steel tube, beech frame, Viennese cane. Renamed Cesca in the 1960s by the maker Gavina, after Breuer's adopted daughter Francesca — steel had found its softness. See the original and its alternatives →

7. The Tulip — Eero Saarinen, 1957

Saarinen wanted to be done with "the slum of legs" beneath tables: a single stem, a moulded shell, a cushion. The chair of Knoll's Pedestal Group — and of the television spaceships of the 1960s, which knew exactly what they were doing. See the original and its alternatives →

8. The Superleggera — Gio Ponti, 1957

1.7 kilos, an 18-millimetre triangular section, the caned seat: Ponti distils the Chiavari fisherman's chair down to its essence. Cassina threw it from a fourth-floor window for the advertising — it bounced. See the original and its alternatives →

9. The Zig-Zag — Gerrit Rietveld, 1934

Four boards, a Z, no legs: Rietveld reduces the chair to a line in space, De Stijl carried to its limit. Reissued by Cassina, it remains more radical than almost everything drawn since. See the original and its alternatives →

10. The Louis Ghost — Philippe Starck, 2002

A medallion armchair in the Louis XV spirit, injection-moulded in transparent polycarbonate, from a single mould. Starck feeds three centuries of French furniture into a Kartell machine — sold by the million, copied still more. See the original and its alternatives →

And if you spotted it in a photo?

Every piece on this list has its own reference page on Beyit, with the original, its history and alternatives at every price. And if a piece of furniture intrigues you in a photo — an Instagram interior, a film, a period house — scan it: Beyit identifies it.