Egg ChairEgg Chairs: Jacobsen Chair, Hanging Egg Chair

The egg chair was designed in 1958 for a Radisson Hotel in Copenhagen, Denmark by Arne Jacobsen. The company that manufactured the original egg is Fritz Hansen. Jacobsen used his usual unique sense of style to design the egg, and he liked to use new materials and designs in his work. This chair is believed to have been inspired by the “womb chair” designed by Eero Saarinens. It does show off some of the same traits. The egg is more complete in design, in many respects. The Swan chair is also related to the egg, as are the Giraffe, the ball chair, the Drop, the pod chair, the Grand-Prix, the Cigar, the bubble chair and the Ant chair.

Hanging egg chairs were originally designed as couches as well as chairs. The Swan couch actually had many numbers made, and it is still made, but there were only a few egg couches made. The Radisson commissioned several of them, and they made some as a special edition couch as well. The price was a weighty $60,000 each!

The Egg-couch was only produced in a limited run, not only to make those an exclusive item, but also because they were difficult to make and because there was a design flaw. The egg-couch is too large for two cow hides to cover it. This means you can see stitching in the center of the couch, which is not the way Jacobsen designs couches or chairs. As long as the couch is covered with fabric and not leather, however, the design can work.

Apparently, the Egg Chair by Jacobsen was also used by a McDonalds restaurant in London. And there is an Egg in another McDonalds in Copenhagen, along with other furniture designed by Arne Jacobsen.

The Fritz Hansen company celebrated the Egg Chair's 50th anniversary in 2008, with one shy of 1000 limited editions of the modern furniture egg chairs made. This collection was scheduled to include chocolate colored leather on the front and brown suede on the back. The base is made from solid bronze, which is hand-polished. This creates a look that is unique for only this chair. Each of these 999 Egg chairs will be engraved under the seat cushion.

If you buy a real version of the egg chairs, the price tag may cause you to step back. But the quality is excellent and they hold their resale value very well. You can occasionally find used egg chairs for sale on ebay or craigslist, and you might run into them at consignment or vintage shops. There are still deals to be had on ebay, but check the seller's feedback, especially if there are comments about other items that were also one-of-a-kind, whether they were found to be authentic. Do your research and talk to the seller to learn all you can about the chair.

If you have the money for one of the real egg chairs, buy one. Knowing it is legitimate will give you a good feeling, since the resale value will stay high, and the quality and fit of an egg chair original can't be matched by the knock-offs.

The cheap egg chairs for sale are very much retro chairs, and also quite in style again these days. The varieties are all symbolic of the period they came from, but they fit quite well into today's homes, too.

Swivel chairs were mainly seen in offices after their inception, until the fifties and sixties, when they made it into the home scene, and now, retro decorators enjoy their use. These chairs are an amalgam of comfort, convenience and efficiency, and they can be used in many ways.

The use of new materials and the sleek lines of cheap egg chairs, along with their streamlined design, are typical of modern retro design, and egg chairs that were popular in the fifties through the seventies are popular again, now.

Retro egg chairs have become classics in chair design. When they were first introduced, they were considered revolutionary, due to their construction and shape. But even though they were made with the cutting edge of design then, they were still made with comfort and convenience in mind.

The shell of some egg chairs is made with selected materials that allow the unique shape to be utilized. They are well-cushioned and enveloping. Their design is timeless, and they fit in well with modern decor.

Arne Jacobson designed the original egg chair, although it wasn't a cheap egg chair initially. It has not lost any of its popularity in the years since its inception. The designer was known for chairs with no-nonsense style, and he used newer materials in exciting ways. The egg chair is a well-known design of Jacobson. He combined the sparkle and gleam of a swivel base with smoother types of upholstery, and used bright colors to make the egg chair atop a steel framework that curves to hug the person sitting in it.

The egg chair has been considered as one of the more iconic of all the modern retro designs in furniture. The egg shape creates a wonderful seating place, and this chair expanded the concepts of what furniture could be, since it created privacy with its space within your home space.

Retro chairs show that the fashion of former times will often come back into style at a later date. The reappearance of so many retro chairs as well as the fashion clothing styles coming back into "vogue" are proof that fashion statements can be made with retro furnishings and fashion. This has happened with chairs like it has with clothing, although the trends in interior design don't tend to be as predictable as those in the fashion clothing world.

In the sixties, minimalist design was the story of the day, as far as furniture is concerned. Where carpet once was popular, now people are tearing it up to expose the lovely hardwood floors beneath. Conventional chairs that had been quite popular now are giving way to modern sculpted plastic chairs. Sharper angles have replaced soft edges, and the look of the cheap egg chairs for sale has come back into style.

The world of furnishing fashion moves in circles, just like a swivel egg chair. In the US and the UK, patterns of fashion from the 1960's through the 1980's have surfaced again with the designs of those years becoming more prevalent now. Trends in furniture aren't as fickle as those in clothing fashion, but they are not any more predictable.

In the 1960's, furniture of the time was inspired predominantly by designs that were minimalistic. The chairs popular at the time gave way to more modern shapes, made with sculpted plastics. Chairs with sharper edges began to give way to those with soft edges and ovals, like those of swivel egg chairs. The resurgence of vintage furniture has introduced more people to egg chairs for sale.

Egg chairs are not new; they were invented in the late 1950s' by Arne Jacobsen, an innovative designer from Denmark. The egg chairs, and their newer cousins the swivel egg chairs, were a remodel of the famous Royal SAS Hotel in Copenhagen, which was a project that Jacobsen was rightly proud of. This work resulted in what was to be called the egg chair, including such designs as the swan chair and the drop chair. The swivel egg chair followed soon afterward, giving the design even more appeal.

Arne Jacobsen was a native of Copenhagen. He was the king of furniture design in the land where he was born, without much dispute at all. His works in the 1950's in the fields of design and architecture are now, many of them, icons. He worked in school and housing projects around Denmark before designing the products he would become famous for. Swan and Egg chairs were shown off to the world, and would become two of our century's more famous chairs.

Swivel egg chairs can currently be seen in TV commercials for, not surprisingly, the “incredible edible egg”. Its popularity rivals that which it knew in the 1960's. Denmark still is the home from which many of these chairs are hatched, and the Fritz Hansen company has also been affiliated with egg chairs for a long time. The company has many loyal followers and fans. This helps to explain why the chair's original design is still nearly identical in its posture to the original.

Swivel egg chairs inspired many similar designs, in look if not in function. Some of these are the Bubble Chair, the Pastil Chair and the Ball Chair. Each of these drew some of their inspiration from the Egg Chair.

The swivel egg chair's influence is still seen today. One example of this is the retro-styled swivel chair that you may see in hotels, bars, nightclubs and private homes. It draws on the egg chair for its basic appearance and function. The figure-hanging tub chairs are also being revived in their popularity. They can be found now in hotels all over the world. The furniture fashion scene owes a lot to that one important discovery by Arne Jacobsen, which will forever be loved as the swivel egg chair.