Peter Ghyczy, Designer Garden Egg Chair The garden egg chair is a unique piece of design furniture originating from the late 60s. Being redesigned for the 21st century, this portable and light weight garden chair completely revived as a one of a kind among garden furniture. The unique egg-shaped design of the garden egg chair makes it completely waterproof when flipping down the top. The garden egg chair is perfect for outdoor use all year around, and will take no harm from a life frequented by rain or snow at times. However, the versatility of the garden egg chair makes it also a real eye catcher for any indoor area as well. Peter & Felix Ghyczy The body of the garden egg chair consists of a hard, resistant shell as where the inside represents the garden egg chair’s softer side, with a detachable textile cover on the comfortable cushion. Both the outer shell and the interior are available in a series of colours, allowing for enough mixing and matching to ensure a garden egg chair which best reflects one’s personality.
In order to find a unique piece of design furniture for yourself, customize your own garden egg chair right here. The garden egg chair is a classic among designer furniture made by the hands of Peter Ghyczy in 1968, as head of the design department at Elastogran / Reuter. Peter Ghyczy was experimenting with newly developed synthetic materials and one of the results which drew the most attention was the unique and complex design of the garden egg chair. From Suitcase to Egg Chair The original idea was to design a portable piece of design furniture which could be put up and closed without having to take the seating pads out. The first design of the garden egg chair was not egg-shaped at all, but looked more like a suitcase. Only little by little Peter Ghyczy realized that the design was going to be an egg and so the garden egg chair was born. 40 Years Garden Egg Chair In 2008, the garden egg chair reached the land-mark age of 40. This unique design chair has not stood still in its development during these years, as more suitable materials being substituted for previous ones as technology progressed.
In the beginning, the garden egg chair was manufactured by the East-German firm VEB-Synthese-Werk in Swarzheide, but in 1998 the garden egg chair found its way home again and the egg chair’s base of production is now Ghyczy Selection BV in the Netherlands. Peter Ghyczy, born in 1940, left his native Hungary in 1956 due to the Hungarian revolution for West-Germany. After completing his secondary education in 1961, he began pursuing his interests by studying sculpture at the Düsseldorf Art Academy followed by studying architecture at Aachen University. From 1968 until 1972 he was head of the design department at Elastogran / Reuter. It was there that he designed a unique design chair, the garden egg chair, in 1968. In 1972, Peter Ghyczy traded again in his country of residence, this time moving to the Netherlands, where he founded the firm Ghyczy Selection BV, and the production of the garden egg chair has been based there since 1998. Perhaps the essence of Peter Ghyczy’s work, and what signifies him as a designer most, are the smooth blends that he manages to create out of seemingly contradictive concepts.
The elements of classical Modernism that can be found in his designs demonstrate this clearly, as well as the Art Deco which manages to live alongside a quick, subtly playful style. The garden egg chair is an excellent example of this.In 1958 Arne Jacobsen designed the Egg chair for the lobby, reception area and suites of the SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen. This chair has become an icon in Danish design history and is synonymous with the hotel and the idea of a total design environment. Everything from the flatware, doorknobs and ashtrays to the furniture, lighting and building itself was designed by Jacobsen. The rounded form of the Egg chair offers a striking counterpoint to the strong horizontal and vertical lines of the building’s modernist architecture, while its enveloping, cocoon-like shape produces a moment of privacy within the busy lobby. Jacobsen was one of the first designers to use a strong foam inner shell over a hard fibreglass armature. This allowed the production team at Fritz Hansen to create a robust yet light sculptural form in a complex shape.
The exterior coverings varied from leather to wool. The chair on display is covered in “Royal” blue, a wool fabric designed by Jacobsen for use in the hotel. Today, as it was in 1958, the chair is handmade by the Danish furniture manufacturer Fritz Hansen.Sometimes you can be mistaken for years. I, for my part, was always of the opinion that the garden egg chair known as "Senftenberger Sitzei" was a design product which had typically originated in former East Germany. This was because during the 1990s it featured in the retro-range of just about any good second-hand design shop in Berlin that wanted to appeal to the in-crowd. Soon it also adorned the interior of quite a few lounge bars in the Mitte district. "Look, there's one of those cool chairs from the East!", people would typically comment when they saw the chair, then patting its curved plastic shell in tender admiration. This is hardly surprising since the eggs - originally designed for outdoor use in the garden - are really very cute.
When closed, they resemble the smooth, lurid skin of an oversized M&M; when open, they exude a real space-age feel. Think Star Trek or James Bond. Even though the garden egg chair has a few links to East Germany, its actual history is far more complex. In 1968, it was designed by Hungarian architect Peter Ghyczy, who was barely 28 years old at the time. Immediately after graduating from the University of Aachen, for some reason he was appointed head designer at the polyurethane manufacturer Elastogran/Reuter in Lemförde near Osnabrück in the Northwest of Germany. His task was to develop prototypes for pieces of furniture that were to be made of polyurethane, a material that was still new at the time. He designed an entire range, including the garden egg chair, which was initially produced in small numbers by craft producer Vereinigte Werkstätten in Munich and given as a gift to business clients. When mass production was about to begin, however, Elastogran got cold feet and made the unusual decision of having the chair manufactured on the other side of the Wall where production costs were far cheaper.
In 1971, it was nationally-owned enterprise VEB Synthesewerk Schwarzheide near Senftenberg that bagged the order. The plastic eggs, which come with detachable upholstery and are completely water-tight when closed, were also launched on the East German market. Unfortunately, however, they were out of the financial range of most people there. The majority of the ‘eggs ‘were therefore sold in the West if only for a short period - two or three years down the line and with about one thousand copies sold, production was stopped. The oil crisis had turned plastic into a luxury item and, in any case, lacquering the plastic shells had been a problem right from the beginning.In 1972, Peter Ghyczy set up his own furniture company, Ghyczy Selection, in the Dutch town of Swalmen, not far from the German border. "Given the conservative attitude of the producers, I decided to take control of production and distribution myself," he recalls. However, he did not include the garden egg chair in his range until 1998, when the original eggs suddenly came to fame again.