Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Sorry, I just couldn’t resist. But if we’re going to talk about chairs for hotels, one of the first that will probably come to mind is the Egg Chair. Designed in the 1950s by Arne Jacobsen for the lobby and reception areas of the Radisson SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen, Denmark, this chair has become a design icon.
Believed to have been influenced by Eero Saarinen’s Womb Chair, the Egg Chair weighs just 13 kilograms and was originally available in leather, but later Jacobsen permitted renditions in cloth to lower its price. It was introduced to the public at an exhibition in Paris, France, in 1958, and then in Denmark in January 1959.