Garden Egg Chair (1968)

One quick glance at Peter Ghyczy's Garden Egg Chair design tells you it was born in the 1960s. Its space-age egg-shaped exterior and bright colours reflect the confidence of the time that new materials, technologies and design could build a more beautiful world. What is not so obvious is how closely it was tied to Europe's troubled post-war history.

Ghyczy fled his native Hungary during his teens after the failed 1956 revolution against Stalinist communism. After completing his education in what was then West Germany, including graduating in architecture at Aachen, Ghyczy was taken on by the Reuter company to design products that would showcase the PU materials from its Elastogran subsidiary.

The Garden Egg Chair was one of these projects, using rigid PU for the folding shell and foamed PU for the cushion. However, only a handful of chairs were produced in West Germany; mass production was destined for East Germany where costs were much lower.

Elastogran licensed manufacture to VEB Synthesewerk Scharzweide in East Germany. One third of the production was to return to West Germany, with the remainder destined for East Germany and other export markets. The Eastern German authorities did not publicise such manufacturing arrangements, but they were not uncommon at the time.
The Garden Egg Chair only remained in production for around three years but, in a strange twist, it became something of an icon for East German design during the early 1970s.

Meanwhile, Ghyczy left Elastogran and Germany to set up his own design company in The Netherlands. And in 1998 he set in motion plans to resume manufacture of his now classic design - updated to use the materials and manufacturing methods of today.

Since 2006 the chair has been produced using PS/PPO blend for the shell; foamed PU is still used for the cushion. The chair is moulded by VMT at Heerde in The Netherlands and assembled by Ghyczy Selection at Reubenberg, which is run by the designer's son, Felix.