Design: Eero Aarnio Ball Chair

I am really into product design (particularly furniture design), even more so than fashion at times. I was into product design, and to an extent architecture, long before my interest in fashion began. Much of my childhood was characterised by pilgrimages to the Design Museum (and, of course, the Conran Shop and Selfridges home department, back when the latter used to be good), and traipsing around all manner of bizarre buildings on London Open House weekend (queued once for over four hours for a tour of Norman Foster's 30 St Mary Axe, aka 'the gherkin,' including access to the domed observation area right at the top, but it was totally worth it). In fact, I still does these things when I get chance (which is less so now in the absence of school holidays), and I also hoard design, architecture and art books. I can't tell you how much I love a good design book, or indeed browsing a design book shop. Even when the Tate Modern has put on another shit exhibition (I'm thinking of you, Pop Life: Art in a Material World ) the book shop there always makes any visit worthwhile. Taschen, Phaidon and teNeues... names that never fail to make me happy.

Anyway, anyway, I thought I would start adding a few more design, architecture and possibly art posts into the mix here. In an *ideal* world I would also have a design blog, an 1850-1950 art blog, an ultra minimal black and white blog (seriously obsessed by the idea.. saw one and it looked amazing, so pure, so disciplined!), but as you know I hardly find the time to update regularly here so that is patently unrealistic, sadly. Don't worry, though, I'm not by any means going to abandon fashion: it is still the area out of these which lends itself best to blogging, not least because of the huge interest in it (much, much more than in product design) and abundance of good imagery on the net.

I thought a good place to kick off would be with Eero Aarnio's Ball Chair, one of my all time favourite pieces of furniture, and #1 aspirational 'wish I owned' piece.

The Ball Chair (along with its close relation, the Bubble) is the best known piece by Finnish designer Eero Aarnio. He designed it in 1966, as a piece of furniture for his first home which he had just moved into with his wife. It is of course heavily emblematic of 60s style now, but at the same time I think it has a real timelessness thanks to its elegance, the way it almost floats... it's hard to argue with one of the simplest geometric forms.

The designer himself in one of the earlier versions which had an inbuilt telephone (others had radios and reading lights integrated). Ball Chairs are indeed like a "room within a room" as intended; there's something very comforting about them, and they're an ideal place in which to escape the pressures of life for a while.

Image from Flickr.

Image from Desire to Inspire.

Of course they don't come cheap. The price is about £3,000GBP I think, so obviously one does not grace my student room here. When you consider the product itself though, the quality and the workmanship, the price is more understandable. And compared to fashion prices I think it is very reasonable: so many 'one season only' things are £1,000+ now, from shoes to dresses to bags, but this is a classic item which will last a lifetime, will never age really, will always hold resale value, and can be passed onto your children (unless, heaven help us, they turn out to be fans of Louis XV repros...)

There are cheaper imitations, but I think you have to get the real thing, manufactured in accordance with the designer's original specifications, when it comes to design classic furniture. I've also read accounts of how the ball sometimes snaps off the pedestal of fakes and goes rolling away!

I think the related suspended Bubble Chair enjoys greater popularity today, because it is less extreme and easier to integrate into interiors (couldn't find any really good pictures of the Ball in-situ) although for me it has never had the same appeal.

Eero-Aarnio.com (source of all images, except where stated otherwise)
Adelta.de (official manufacturer)