The Egg is a chair designed by
Arne Jacobsen
Arne Emil Jacobsen, Hon. FAIA () 11 February 1902 – 24 March 1971) was a Danish architect and furniture designer. He is remembered for his contribution to architectural functionalism and for the worldwide success he enjoyed with simple we ...
in 1959 for the
Radisson SAS
Radisson Blu is an international chain of hotels operated by Radisson Hotels. With roots dating back to the 1960s, the Radisson Blu brand name came into existence in 2009 with a rebranding from Radisson SAS. Its hotels are found in major cities, ...
hotel in
Copenhagen
Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...
,
Denmark
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. It is manufactured by
Republic of Fritz Hansen
Fritz Hansen, also known as Republic of Fritz Hansen, is a Danish furniture design company. Designers who have worked for Fritz Hansen include Arne Jacobsen (1902–1971), Poul Kjærholm (1929–1980), Hans J. Wegner (1914–2007) and Piet Hein ...
.
Design
The Egg was designed in a typical Jacobsen style, using state-of-the-art material.
It is believed to be inspired by
Eero Saarinen
Eero Saarinen (, ; August 20, 1910 – September 1, 1961) was a Finnish-American architect and industrial designer noted for his wide-ranging array of designs for buildings and monuments. Saarinen is best known for designing the General Motors ...
's "Womb chair", from which it borrows some traits.
Related to the Egg is the
Swan chair and, to some degree, many of Jacobsen's plywood chairs such as "7", the Ant, the Cigar, the Grand Prix-chair, the Pot, the Drop and the Giraffe.
The Egg (like the Swan) was also designed as a couch. While the Swan couch is still in production, only a handful of Egg couches have ever been made. A few were made for the Radisson Hotel, and a few years back, some were made as a "special edition" couch. The price was quite high—about 400,000
DKK, the equivalent of roughly US$75,000.
The reason for the limited production of the Egg couch, besides the wish for exclusivity, is the difficulty involved in making it, plus a design flaw: the couch is too big to be covered by two entire cow-hides, which is only just possible with the Egg-chair. This leaves a very visible stitching down the middle of the couch. This problem can, however, be solved by making the upholstery in fabric rather than leather.
In the media
According to an article in ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', the Egg chair has also been used by
McDonald's
McDonald's Corporation is an American Multinational corporation, multinational fast food chain store, chain, founded in 1940 as a restaurant operated by Richard and Maurice McDonald, in San Bernardino, California, United States. They rechri ...
as part of a high-concept redesign of one of its restaurants in
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
. Furthermore, The Egg is in a McDonald's restaurant in
Nørrebrogade
Nørrebrogade is the principal shopping street of the Nørrebro district of Copenhagen, Denmark. It runs from The Lakes in the southeast to Nørrebro station in the northwest, linking Frederiksborggade and Queen Louise's Bridge with Frederikssu ...
, Copenhagen, among other furniture by Arne Jacobsen, although some are imitations.
It was used as the diary room chair in the first UK series of "Big Brother".
The newly renovated
Terminal 2 at San Francisco International Airport features the Egg in its boarding area.
[.]
See also
*
Danish modern
Danish modern is a style of minimalist furniture and housewares from Denmark associated with the Danish design movement. In the 1920s, Kaare Klint embraced the principles of Bauhaus modernism in furniture design, creating clean, pure lines based ...
*
List of Danish furniture designers
*
List of chairs
The following is a partial list of chairs with descriptions, with internal or external cross-references about most of the chairs. For other chair-like types (like bench, stool), see
0-9
* 10 Downing Street Guard Chairs, two antique chairs used ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Egg (Chair)
1959 in art
Chairs
Arne Jacobsen furniture
Individual models of furniture