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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Lifestyle
Alice Fisher

Sawdust toilets and chairs that crash cars: inside Copenhagen’s radical design festival

Take a seat … Takt’s exhibition to launch Bow Chair, designed by Industrial Facility
Take a seat … Takt’s exhibition to launch Bow Chair, designed by Industrial Facility. Photograph: Jonathan Damslund/Takt

At the Verpan showroom, a space dedicated to the work of Verner Panton, the renowned Danish designer’s daughter Carin Panton von Halem regaled a rapt audience with an anecdote. Apparently when Panton’s cone chair was displayed in a New York shop window in the late 1950s, it had to be removed by the police after drivers distracted by the tomato red seat got into a road accident. She also had stories about how the neighbours of the Pantons’ famous Hornbæk summer house started a petition to get him to change the bright green exterior of the holiday home.

Over at the Hem furniture shop, Finnish designer Yrjö Kukkapuro’s daughter Isa gave an equally personal speech at the launch of the new edition of Kukkapuro’s experiment chair. She explained how the original launch of the chair coincided with the birth of her daughter Ida. Two wonderful creations.

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