Sacco, 40th Anniversary - Dwell Blog

A chair by any other name is still a chair but what about a chair with no legs, no arms, and no permanent seat or backrest?

Four decades ago, Pierro Gatti, Cesare Paolini, and Franco Teodoro filled a bag with polystyrene balls and presented it to Aurelio Zanotta, founder of the Italian furniture company Zanotta. The result: The world’s first mass-produced beanbag chair, the Sacco. Despite its radical departure from traditional chair design (Zanotta’s son and now CEO of the company, Martino Zanotta, describes its proposition as “ridiculously crazy” but in an exciting, revolutionary way), the Sacco—along with other novel creations for Zanotta such as Jonathan De Pas, Donato D’Urbino, and Paolo Lomazzi’s Blow chair , the first inflatable chair—paved the way for the company’s success and ascent to the international stage.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Sacco, which has been part of the New York MoMA’s permanent collection since 1972. To celebrate, Zanotta has created a limited edition of 40 Sacco chairs made out of 40 unique fabrics. For more information, visit zanotta.com .

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Posted by: Miyoko Ohtake on Nov 20, 08 at 09:00 AM PST