Vitra – Miniature Saarinen Tulip Chair

The Tulip Chair is one of a series of chairs, stools, and tables developed by Eero Saarinen within a five-year period. The characteristic feature of the series is that the supporting structure has been pared to a central supporting stem like a wineglass in order to emphasise the uniformity of table and chair.

Eero Saarinen describes the Tulip Chair: The bases of tables and chairs in a typical furniture arrangement create an ugly, confusing, and restless world. I wanted to design a chair as an integrated whole once again. All important furniture of the past always had a holistic structure, from King Tuts chair to that of Thomas Chippendale. Today, we are parting ways with this holism with our predilection for plastic and laminated wood shells. I am looking forward to the point when the plastics industry will be capable of manufacturing the chair using just one material, the way I have designed it.

The original of the Saarinen Tulip Chair was designed by Eero Saarinen in 1956 and it is produced as 1:1 model by the Knoll Associates Inc., New York/USA since 1956.

The here offered miniature by Vitra (scale 1:6) consists of lacquered polyurethane, aluminium and fabrics.