Sometimes, a piece of furniture comes along and changes everything around us. If a painting is meant to be looked at and fashion meant to be worn, furniture is meant to be lived in – slept in, worked in, sat in. It dictates how we interact with our surrounding spaces, how we go about our daily lives, even during the most mundane moments. George Nelson’s collection for Herman Miller, for example, created the template for cubicles, now omnipresent in office buildings.
But what are the pieces that have not only entered our homes but our collective consciousness? Vogue asked 22 interior designers and professionals to find out. Their answers ranged from the simple farm table to Gaetano Pesce’s Space Age-esque Up chair. Some of them are akin to priceless works of art. Take Yves Klein’s Table IKB.
In 1961, Klein painted a canvas with International Klein Blue, a colour he invented himself. (The work now sits in MoMA.) Two years later, after the artist’s death, his widow shepherded a coffee table filled with the same ultramarine pigment to market, based on the late artist’s prototype. Yet, unlike fine art, design is a medium where form almost always follows function. You can still set your coffee mug upon a Table IKB – although we’d recommend a coaster.
Below, a list of the most iconic furniture designs in history, as chosen by the experts.
Table IKB by Yves Klein
This iconic cocktail table was done by Yves Klein, one of the most influential, prominent, and controversial French artists to emerge in the 1950s, also known as a forerunner of Minimal art as well as Pop art. Klein’s table is similar to his suspended pigment pieces, which were the genesis for this design. The form of the table is very simple, very elegant, and meant really to disappear. The pigment is all. And since the pigment is loose, it does invite comparison to Klein’s belief in pure space. The eye penetrates what seems to be a limitless depth.