Panton Junior chair: Pint-sized version of a classic

If you’ve ever been to a restaurant that counts children as an important part of its clientele, you’ve probably seen the type of furniture it features: life-size figures of comic book characters or superheroes, brightly colored tables shaped like flowers or mushrooms and the like. Some have animal chairs, complete with fake fur or feathers. While they certainly would attract a child, I’m wondering how much a hassle it would be to clean up and maintain such chairs, especially knowing how children can create a mess with their food sometimes.

But if a restaurant used something like the Panton Junior chair manufactured by Vistra, then cleanup and maintenance would be a lot easier. Sure, it may not be as fun as say, a giraffe or lion chair, but I think children would still find its catchy shape and form attractive. And since the Panton Junior chairs are made of plastic and are stackable, they are less of a headache for restaurant owners to clean and store.

The chair is patterned after the original one designed by Danish architect Verner Panton in 1968, except that it’s a bit smaller. The whole chair is made from one big piece of polypropylene, which is not only durable, but keeps the brightness of its color over time. It’s been a long time since Panton created this cantilever chair and he’s created many more pieces over the years, many of which can be used as bistro dining furniture – such as his Wire Chairs and Flying Chairs. Panton’s designs experienced a revival in popularity in the 1990s, and he received more awards for them.

Panton died in September 1998, but his creations live on, not as just museum pieces to be looked at from a distance. Like the Panton Junior chair, many of them have real-world applications that both children and adults can appreciate.