Panton broke with the Danish tradition of simple, pure and elegant lines in wooden furniture, and experimented with colour and new materials. He was a craftsman who used plastic and metal to create objects with a more international look. Verner Panton was a prolific designer of not only furniture, but also lighting and textiles.
In 1960, he presented the result of a dream he had had for a long time; a chair moulded in one piece of plastic. This chair, simply called “Panton chair” is one of the icons of its time and made Panton’s name internationally famous. Another celebrated Panton creation was the Cone Chair in 1959, which caused a minor scandal and cemented his place as a visionary, exciting designer. When it was photographed in a Danish design magazine two years later, Panton draped naked with shop mannequins and models on the chairs. Needless to say this attracted a lot of publicity. After this, in the late 1960s and early 70s, he started designing “total environments”, including the Astoria Hotel at Trondheim in Norway, covering the walls and floors in the same pattern.
In 1995, British Vogue featured a naked Kate Moss on a Panton Chair, pushing his designs back to centre-stage after a brief time away from the spotlight. His 1960s pieces were put back into production and he was invited to design an exhibition at Trapholdtmuseum in Kolding, Denmark. The exhibition opened on 17 September 1998, but Verner Panton had died in Copenhagen 12 days earlier.