Available from these sellers. Used & new (3) from $899.00 Eero Aarnio Ball Chair (Orange) The fiberglass Ball chair remains as cutting edge in its design, despite being created over 40 year’s ago. 3.6 out of 5 stars #161,055 in Home and Garden (See top 100) #3,602 in Home & Kitchen > Furniture > Living Room Furniture > Chairs 65 star50%4 star17%3 star17%2 star16%See all verified purchase reviewsTop Customer ReviewsUnfortunately, the base arrived with a big crack. This is a good chair for the price|It could be good for this price, if it's not falling apart on it's own.|Chair is amazing, best price online really| See and discover other items: living room chairs• — not member yet ? Hello all, I have just acquired this ball chair and am trying to figure out if it's an original Eero Aarnio or a reproduction. There are no markings on it that I can see, I've gone over it a good few times. I've seen similar online being called originals with no markings.
The fabric seems to be wool, the body heavy. I think it's fibreglass. There is some loss around the edges and it has plenty of scratches. The ball part comes off the base. Any help would be greatly appreciated, I've emailed Eero Aarnio but they have yet to get back to me. "Summer Sale" Cognac Chairs... Eero Aarnio 'Pirtti' Chairs... Eero Aarnio Pastille chairNot many chairs can lay claim to Playboy cover-star status, but Eero Aarnio’s spherical Ball Chair has hosted a variety of lithe beauties, gracing the cover of Hugh Hefner’s magazine several times. No wonder, it was described in a local Finnish newspaper as "the most exciting chair in the world" when it launched.Now, 50 years later, the original Ball Chair is back. Alongside a host of other immediately recognisable pieces, such as the swinging Bubble Chair, the characterful Pony, and the plastic fantastic Pastil seats, the Ball Chair is to be produced and made available to order as part of a new dedicated brand – Eero Aarnio Originals.
As anyone who has sat in an original Ball Chair will know, that first-ever review was spot on. A big, perfectly round, acoustically soothing cocoon, it may have been designed in the Sixties but its appeal is more relevant than ever. Just as the early model in the hallway at Aarnio’s house in Veikkola is resplendent with a (still-working) built-in landline dial phone, today’s Ball Chair is a safe haven to hide away in with a smart phone. The design, most striking in its original white/black colourway, is an exercise in Yin and Yang: as an interiors piece, it’s a huge statement, but once seated inside, the Ball Chair creates its own private universe. And yet it can be a family favourite too – Eero himself says he originally designed it because he wanted a chair that would fit himself, his wife and their two small daughters all at once. Aarnio, now 84 and still sketching new products daily, has been back in the news already this year thanks to a major retrospective exhibition of his work at the Helsinki Design Museum.
Attracting some 70,000 visitors ("almost 10 times the number who attended the last one, 15 years ago," to Eero’s slightly baffled amusement), a design-savvy public is once again getting excited about these uplifting, characterful creations. A visit to the designer’s lakeside house, which he designed and built himself in 1988, and has extended in various directions since, is an inspirational insight into both the man and his methods. "This is home number 37," he explains over the course of the day – referring (with one of many hand-illustrated "maps") to a lifetime that has seen the hardships of a childhood lived through the Second World War give way to enormous creative success, and a 63-year (and counting) marriage to Pirkko. Aarnio’s emphasis on the good things in life, on family, having fun and being forever forward looking, is no commercial façade. He has never had his own independent studio, preferring to work from home, even when his children were small. "If it’s not noisy I can’t work here," he laughs.
His family have always been his team – inspiration, advisory board and more. His brother, a pilot who made gliders, helped to make the original fibreglass prototype of the Ball Chair, and together they constructed it by hand at the school in Salo where his father was a teacher. Today, his wife and daughters are involved in the new company too. A collaboration with old friend Stefan Mahlberg (former co-founder of One Nordic, Hem and new design and manufacturing venture Aito), Eero Aarnio Originals hopes not only to bring these iconic designs (and their distribution) up to date, but also, explains Mahlberg, to share the stories of the personality behind them. "I have a long relationship with Eero that began with me digging the foundations to the extension on his house," he recalls. "At the time I was studying business and doing building work to earn money. Basically Eero found me in a dirt pit and I worked my way up from there…" Over the years the pair have worked on many projects together.
"I think it has been important for Eero to work with someone who is as creative with the technical solutions as he is with the design," continues Mahlberg. "Not having too many limitations is a thing we both like." There was a need to "dust off" the collection and show the products in a more forward-looking way, says Mahlberg. "Eero is a design hero in Finland, but although internationally everyone knows his work they often don’t know the man behind it." Their plan is to explode the myths (there are a few), leapfrog the academic design history lessons – "that’s really not his style!" – and celebrate Aarnio for the continuous innovator he is. From the Pingy and Puppy characters (children’s "furniture" pieces commissioned and still produced by Magis) that welcome guests into his open, single-storey house, to the bright lights of the Tupla Kupla (Double Bubble), Flamingo and Swan lamps that adorn every other surface, Aarnio’s home and studio are brimming with his creations.
Drawers contain thousands of sketches, a sliding door is papered with magazine covers, and his "assistants" – two lovable characters that were inspired by each of his daughters and are now rendered on paper, in plywood and plastic – pop up at every turn. Even the smoke sauna down by the water’s edge (which he fires up a few times a week) features a little wooden Puppy at the door. There is a story attached to everything, and Aarnio relishes telling them. For his attitude as much as his innovations, as a Finnish cultural export he’s up there with Alvar Aalto, Marimekko and the Moomins. But on the international stage his designs – with their wow factor and visual language of plastics and mould-casting – don’t immediately fit that Scandinavian box, blonde wood or otherwise. At a time when the Finnish design authority Kaj Franck spoke about a designer’s anonymity being a matter of principle, Eero Aarnio’s name was being stamped on the bottom of thousands of plastic Polaris chairs.
Though plastics eventually fell out of favour, Aarnio’s argument is to think long term. "Quality will last," he says. "These products are recycled down the generations – from grandfather to grandson." Efficiency of form is as much a driver in his work as end-purpose. The Pastil seat, for example, was a direct result of Aarnio thinking about how to fill the empty space in the packing crate for the Ball Chairs. Aarnio says he’s often asked to explain his designs – why he pursues one idea over another. Though it often starts with curiosity, a question or a problem to be solved, for the most part, he admits, "I don’t know where the results come from. It’s just how I feel." He gestures to his stomach: "It’s in my gut. And my head, and my heart. A good design has to feel right in all three." Asked how the design world has evolved over his 60-year career, Aarnio shrugs. "I don’t really know. I don’t look at what everyone else is doing, I don’t have time," he says, although he takes an active interest in technologies and materials and the possibilities they present.
"I only ever look forward," he says, "never back." Not so far forward, mind you, that we’re all living on Mars in his mind. A popular misconception about Aarnio’s style is that it was born out of the Space Age era. But even if Barbarella wouldn’t look out of place in a Bubble Chair, that was not the idea. "First and foremost my designs are functional," he says, "even if they look like sculpture or toys." Many of his designs – Asko’s Captain’s Chair, Chanterelle Table and VSOP for example – are in a similar idiom to Eames and Saarinen products of the time. But ultimately Aarnio follows his curiosity and his passions, and that means playfulness. The 1973 soft, upholstered Pony, for example, is "not a toy seat, but a seat toy," he says. It’s not a chair exactly, but it’s much more than a giant stuffed animal too. Like other 20th-century design classics such as the Eames lounger, the Castiglionis’ Arco floor lamp or Corbusier’s Barcelona chair, the international market has been flooded over the years with knock-off versions of Eero Aarnio products.
But where a customer looking to buy the original of any of the above examples could – in good faith – go straight to large, established manufacturers (Vitra, Flos or Knoll respectively), Aarnio’s designs have been rather less accessible, the original design licensed only by Adelta, a small manufacturer in Germany. It could be argued that any sense of authorship has been eroded simply because it’s easier to pick up a £500 fake than an original at more than 10 times that. Now under the one label the collection and the products will be considerably more accessible, better branded, higher quality and sold at a better price point. With new copyright laws finally now in effect (it’s now illegal for dealers to make, import or sell new furniture copies), communication is set to be Eero Aarnio Original’s most powerful weapon. "It’s the same as for Louis Vuitton," explains Mahlberg. "The people who buy the fakes are not our customers anyway." Aarnio himself doesn’t mind too much either.