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Bean bag chair

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sacco
DesignerPiero Gatti, Cesare Paolini, Franco Teodoro
Date1968
Made inItaly
MaterialsLeather or textile (shell), expanded polystyrene (filling)
Style / traditionItalian Radical design
Sold byZanotta S.p.A.
CollectionMuseum of Modern Art, Centre Pompidou, Victoria and Albert Museum, et al.

The Sacco chair (also known as a beanbag chair, or simply a beanbag), is a large bag or sack (Italian: sacco) made of leather or fabric filled with expanded polystyrene foam pellets ('beans') or a similar material. It is an example of anatomic design, as its form is determined by the user's body. The Sacco chair was designed by Piero Gatti, Cesare Paolini and Franco Teodoro [it] in 1968, and became "one of the icons of the Italian anti-design movement. Its complete flexibility and formlessness made it the perfect antidote to the static formalism of mainstream Italian furniture of the period” according to design historian Penny Spark.[1][2][3]

The Sacco chair was awarded the Compasso d'Oro, and is in the collections of many museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and ADI Design Museum in Milan.[4][5][6][7]

History

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Sacco was introduced in 1968 by three Italian designers: Piero Gatti, Cesare Paolini, and Franco Teodoro.[2] The object was created in the Italian Modernism movement.[8] Italian modernism's design was highly inspired by newly available technology. Post-war technology allowed an increase in the processes of production by introducing new materials such as polystyrene. The idea of mass-produced goods made within an inexpensive price range appealed to consumers. It therefore created the need for a revolution in the creative and manufacturing process.

The architect, Cesare Paolini, was born in Genoa and graduated from the Polytechnic University of Turin. Franco Teodoro and Piero Gatti, the designers, studied at the Istituto Tecnico Industriale Statale per le Arti Grafiche e Fotografiche of Turin. They established their architecture firm in Turin in 1965.[9]

From left to right, Franco Teodoro, Cesare Paolini and Piero Gatti, creator of Sacco, in Paris in 1969

Piero Gatti, Cesare Paolini and Franco Teodoro, inspired by their designer predecessors, came up in 1968 with the design of Sacco, the "shapeless chair".[3] Although it was not the first design of an amorphous chair in Italian history, Sacco was the first successful product created in partnership with Zanotta. The predecessor of the product had a major design flaw of not being able to sustain its form and never reached production. Sacco addressed that flaw with the use of leather for the exterior and right placed stitching. The use of leather was not coincidental, as at that time the textile was an Italian national pride product.[10] The target user of the chair was the hippie community and their non-conformist households. "In an era characterized by the hippie culture, apartment sharing and student demonstrations, the thirty-something designers created a nonpoltrona (non-chair) and thus launched an attack on good bourgeois taste."[2]

Sacco is part of the permanent collection of the most important museums of contemporary art throughout the world, such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Sacco was part of the 1972 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York Italy: The New Domestic Landscape – Achievements and Problems of Italian Design[11] and was awarded, in 1973, the BIO 5 at the Biennale of Design in Ljubljana.

In 2020, exactly fifty years after the design was first overlooked by the ADI jury, failing to win the 1970 award, the Sacco chair received the Compasso d'Oro Award and was added to the collection of the ADI Design Museum in Milan.[7][4][5]

Exhibitions

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Collections

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Awards

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Sacco often appears in the strips of the comic Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz.[citation needed]

Other bean bag chair products inspired by Sacco

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Other designers have followed the "shapeless" chair design, creating a range of inspired products that take after Sacco.[12] Amongst many, the most successful contemporary model would be Jukka Setala's Fatboy. The product launched in 2002 brought the Finnish designer global recognition. The new form of the bean bag chair has less stitching and a more geometrical take in the means of shape. It also has an EPS filling which is more durable than PVC.[13]

Bibliography

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  • Paola Antonelli (Museum of Modern Art | MOMA), Sacco Chair | Object Lesson
  • Ingrid Halland, The unstable object: Glifo, Blow, Sacco at MoMA, 1972, Journal of Design History, Volume 33, Issue 4, December 2020, Pages 329–345, Oxford University Press, https://doi.org/10.1093/jdh/epz051
  • Cindi Strauss, Germano Celant, J. Taylor Kubala, Radical – Italian Design 1965–1985 – The Dennis Freedman Collection, Yale University Press, 2020
  • Mel Byars, The Design Encyclopedia, New York, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1994
  • Emilio Ambasz [a cura di], Italy: The New Domestic Landscape – Achievements and Problems of Italian Design, New York, Museum Of Modern Art, 1972
  • Margaret Timmers, The Way We Live Now: Designs for Interiors 1950 to the Present Day, Victoria and Albert Museum, 1978
  • Grace Lees-Maffei, Kjetil Fallan [editors], Made in Italy Rethinking a Century of Italian Design, London, Bloomsbury Academic, 2014
  • Paola Antonelli, Matilda McQuaid, Objects of Design from the Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.), 2003
  • Bernhard E. Bürdek, Design Storia, Teoria e Pratica del Design del Prodotto, Roma, Gangemi Editore, 2008
  • Victoria and Albert Museum. Circulation Department, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Modern Chairs 1918–1970, London: Lund Humphries. 1971
  • Victor Papanek, Design for the Real World, New York: 1974
  • Moderne Klassiker, Mobel, die Geschichte machen, Hamburg, 1982
  • Kathryn B. Hiesinger and George H. Marcus III (eds.), Design Since 1945, Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1983
  • Fifty Chairs that Changed the World: Design Museum Fifty, London's Design Museum, London, ISBN 978-1-84091-540-2
  • Charlotte Fiell, Peter Fiell, Plastic dreams: synthetic visions in design, Carlton Books Ltd, 2010, ISBN 978-1-906863-08-1
  • Anne Bony, Design: History, Main Trends, Major Figures, Larousse/Chambers, 2005
  • Bernd Polster, Claudia Newman, Markus Schuler, The A–Z of Modern Design, Merrell Publishers Ltd, 2009, ISBN 978-1-85894-502-6
  • Domitilla Dardi, Il design in cento oggetti, Federico Motta Editore, Milano, 2008, ISBN 978-88-7179-586-7
  • Anty Pansera, Il Design del mobile italiano dal 1946 a oggi, Laterza, 1990
  • Charles Boyce, Joseph T. Butler, Dictionary of Furniture, Simon and Schuster, New York, 2014, ISBN 978-1-62873-840-7
  • Michael Tambini, The Look of the Century, DK Pub., 1999, ISBN 978-0-7894-4635-0
  • AA.VV., 100 objects of italian design La Triennale di Milano: Permanent Collection of Italian Design, The Milan Triennale, Gangemi Editore
  • Germano Celant [ed.], preface by Umberto Eco,The Italian Metamorphosis, 1943–1968, Guggenheim Museum Publications, New York, 1994, ISBN 0-8109-6871-1
  • Fiorella Bulegato, Elena Dellapiana, Il design degli architetti italiani 1920–2000, Mondadori Electa, 2014, ISBN 978-88-370-9562-8

References

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  1. ^ Sparke, Penny (1988). Design in Italy : 1870 to the present. Internet Archive. New York : Abbeville Press. ISBN 978-0-89659-884-3.
  2. ^ a b c Vitra Design Museum. "Sacco". Retrieved 25 September 2014.
  3. ^ a b "'Sacco' beanbag designed by Piero Gatti, Cesare Paolini and Franco Teodoro". Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences, Australia.
  4. ^ a b c "SACCO". ADI Design Museum. Retrieved 2024-06-29.
  5. ^ a b Spolini, Nicoletta (2020-09-09). "Compasso D'Oro. Finalmente all'ADI Design Museum". Vogue Italia (in Italian). Retrieved 2025-01-20.
  6. ^ a b "Piero Gatti, Cesare Paolini, Franco Teodoro. Sacco Chair. 1968". Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved 2025-01-20.
  7. ^ a b "The winners of the 2020 Compasso d'Oro Awards". Domus. Archived from the original on 2020-09-12. Retrieved 2020-11-17.
  8. ^ MOMA, Museum of Modern Art, New York. "Object lesson: Paola Antonelli". Museum of Modern Art, New York. Archived from the original on 2017-04-24. Retrieved 2020-11-17.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  9. ^ a b "Piero Gatti, Cesare Paolini, Franco Teodoro Archivi". Museo Omero (in Italian). Retrieved 2024-08-10.
  10. ^ Raizman, David (2010). "Part V: Humanism and Luxury: International Modernism and Mass Culture after World War II (1945–1960)". In May, Susie (ed.). History of Modern Design Second Edition. Laurence King Publishing. pp. 256–306. ISBN 978-1-85669-694-4.
  11. ^ "Italy: The New Domestic Landscape". MOMA, Museum of Modern Art, New York. Archived from the original on 2016-09-19. Retrieved 2020-11-17.
  12. ^ Griffiths, Sally (2 June 2009). "How to bag a beanbag chair". The Guardian. Retrieved 10 January 2014.
  13. ^ Fatboy (2002). "Fatboy original". Fatboy. Archived from the original on 2017-09-10. Retrieved 16 October 2014.
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