Chair of the Day
Original Hardoy Chair
The Butterfly Chair is the second winner of Design Hole’s Bauhaus Award for Chair of the Day. (The first was Michael Thonet’s Chair #14, otherwise known as the caf?© chair.) It has an interesting history. I was surprised to read that the chair, which is thought of as mid-century modern, was in fact designed by Ferrari-Hardoy in 1938. Originally known as the Hardoy Chair, it was introduced at the 3rd Salon de Artistas Decoradores exhibit in Buenos Aires in 1940 and was made of enameled steel and leather. In 1940, it won the Acquisition Prize by the Museum of Modern Art.
Knoll put the design into production in 1947 and the chair became an international success. It was soon copied far and wide. Knoll tried, without success, to maintain its copyright and so dropped the chair from its line in 1951. With Knoll out of the picture, the butterfly chair was mass produced by many companies with more than 5 million copies sold in the 1950s alone. Thanks to the Knoll Online Museum for this history.
This is the style my parents owned
The Butterfly chair is available in various sizes at Circa 50 for about $100. It has also been reinterpreted by other designers. Pierre Paulin designed his own version in 1966 for Artifort. It’s available from Detroit’s own Mezzanine.
Pierre Paulin’s version for Artifort
So, why does it earn the prestigious Design Hole Bauhaus award? It belongs to a small group of pieces which actually fulfilled the Bauhaus’ dream of designing furniture which was: designless (meaning it can’t be placed into any design era), inexpensively mass-produced, and embraced by the public.
Do you like butterfly chairs? Do you think it deserves the award? Comments, please!
3 Responses to “Chair of the Day”
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Posted by Jennifer at Design Hole on February 3rd, 2008 at 2:55 pm
I’m glad you enjoyed it. I also have memories of the original butterfly chair. My parents owned one back in the day when my father was a young professor with little $$$. My siblings and I fought over who got to sit in it.
I have no idea what happened to it. It probably was thrown out when we moved to California for a year. How I wish I had it now.
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Posted by Laura Berrutti on May 22nd, 2011 at 3:55 pm
This chair was designed by Antonio Bonet, Jorge Ferrari Hardoy, Juan Kurchan.
The name of this chair is BKF (Bonet, Kurchan, Ferrari), and not “buterfly chair”.
Nice. I found your article searching for history of the butterfly chair. I recently trashed my old glider rocker (from when my son was a baby) that I had in my studio because it broke. I was looking for a chair for that spot and was stumped. Then I remembered that my dad’s old 1960′s butterfly chair was in the cellar, so up it came. It needs a new cover, which I’ve ordered, but it’s SO comfy! Thanks for the history of this great seat!