Design Eero Aarnio, 1971.
Fiberglass. Made in Finland by Adelta.
At first sight, the Tomato chair looks complicated, but the second look shows an intelligent combination of 3 circles with same diameter, two of them being armrests, one stretched to a comfortable back, and even a fourth half circle up side down giving the chair a consequent seat. The tomato is much more than a chair, it is a piece of sculpture. To quote Eero Aarnio: "A product idea can come about in many different ways and here is one of them. I realized that Pastil Chair floats and carries the person who sits in it in water but it is very rickety. If there were three items like two great armrests and the back of the chair would be stable, and this is how the idea of the Tomato chair was born. The name reflects its looks: looking at the chair from the front there are two round shapes i.e. two circles like in the word tOmatO."
55" w | 44.5" d | 27.5" h
Aarnio was - and still is - one of the pioneers in using plastic in industrial design. Plastic material set the designers free to create every shape and use every color they wanted. This gave birth to objects oscillating between function and fun - but always fascinating ones.
The finnish designer Eero Aarnio, born in 1932, studied from 1954 to 1957 at the Institute of Industrial Arts in Helsinki and started in 1962 with his own office as an interior and industrial designer.
Engaged in new ideas of furniture he designed the Ball Chair (or globe chair) already in 1963. It was produced some years later. Material (fibreglass) and shape were complete novelties for that time's furniture industry. The fibreglass ball is build on a metal swiveling base, and upholstered with foam/fibrefill. The original colors were white, red, black and orange.
