The 10 Most Famous Design Objects — and Where to Find Your Own

Some objects have stopped being furniture and become proper nouns. We say "a Togo", "an Arco", "a Panton" — and everyone sees the piece. Here are ten, chosen because they changed something, each with a route to the original and its alternatives.

1. The Arco floor lamp — Castiglioni, 1962

A steel arc more than two metres long planted in a block of Carrara marble: the Arco lights the table with no ceiling socket. It is the most imitated floor lamp in the world, and the hole in its base — designed so a broom handle can slot through and two people can carry it — remains the cleverest detail in Italian design. See the original and its alternatives →

2. The Togo sofa — Michel Ducaroy, 1973

No frame, no legs: pleated foam "like a folded tube of toothpaste". Mocked when it appeared at the Salon des arts ménagers, the Togo went on to become Ligne Roset's absolute best-seller and the most sought-after vintage piece of its generation. See the original and its alternatives →

3. The Lounge Chair — Charles & Ray Eames, 1956

Three shells of moulded plywood, leather, an ottoman: the chair meant to have "the warm receptive look of a well-used first baseman's mitt". Seventy years on, it is still the most copied seat in the world. See the original and its alternatives →

4. The Panton Chair — Verner Panton, 1967

The world's first chair moulded from a single piece of plastic, fully cantilevered. It took ten years and four materials to get there; Vitra makes it still. See the original and its alternatives →

5. The Wishbone CH24 — Hans Wegner, 1950

A Y-shaped backrest, a seat of hand-woven paper cord — more than a hundred steps to make. In continuous production since 1950 at Carl Hansen & Søn, it is the Danish chair par excellence. See the original and its alternatives →

6. The Barcelona chair — Mies van der Rohe, 1929

Designed for the German pavilion at the Barcelona Exposition — and, so the story goes, so the King of Spain could sit on it. Two steel curves, forty buttoned cushions: the throne of modernism. See the original and its alternatives →

7. The Componibili — Anna Castelli Ferrieri, 1967

Endlessly stackable ABS cylinders, designed by the co-founder of Kartell. Bedside table, bathroom storage, studio trolley: the most versatile object on this list, and the cheapest in reissue. See the original and its alternatives →

8. The Ultrafragola mirror — Ettore Sottsass, 1970

A wave of opaline plastic that glows pink. Drawn in 1970, it became fifty years later the most photographed mirror on Instagram — to the point where Poltronova struggles to keep up with orders. See the original and its alternatives →

9. The Tam Tam stool — Henry Massonnet, 1968

Two plastic cones clipped together, moulded in twelve seconds. Twelve million sold, Brigitte Bardot photographed sitting on one: the democracy of design in a single object. See the original and its alternatives →

10. The Akari lamps — Isamu Noguchi, 1951

Washi paper from Gifu, bamboo, a bulb: "sculptures of light" that Noguchi wanted as weightless as leaves. The copies are everywhere; the real ones bear the sun and the moon as an ideogram. See the original and its alternatives →

And what if you spotted it in a photo?

Every piece on this list has its own reference page on Beyit, with the original, its story 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.