Famous Furniture: Mars Attacks Ball Chair

An iconic movie produced in 1996, Mars Attacks was a parody on 1950’s sci-fi movies created by Tim Burton. Filled with cheap effects, comedy and an impressive star-studded cast, the movie went on to win a huge amount of awards. Jack Nicholson makes a fantastic president in this movie who tries to reason with martians who sees the president as a threat, leading them to take over the country

Image: Cinemablend

One of the most recognisable moments in this movie is when Nathalie Lake (Sarah Jessica Parker) interviews Professor Donald Kessler (Pierce Brosnan) for a TV show called ‘Today in Fashion’. In this particular scene both actors are sitting in an iconic Ball Chair by Eero Aarnio.

Image: Spotern

In the 1960s Eero Aarnio was fascinated by sailboats which made him familiar with a material we now widely know as fibreglass. Eero had the idea to use fibreglass outside of the boating world and introduce it into furniture production. Eero’s dream was to create a seat that people could not walk past without noticing, but a chair that is also extremely durable and simple. The idea was to “simplify things and remove all corners”.

Image: Aarniooriginals

In 1996, the Ball Chair made it’s debut at the Cologne Furniture Fair, where the chair was sold in 30 different countries within the first week. After this, the chair had been mentioned in the New York Times. Within a small amount of time the chair had gained huge popularity and can now be seen in design museums, movies and music videos.

Image: Aarniooriginals

This retro-futuristic style chair had never meant to be a space-age design, however, this chair was being sold while the first man went into space, so we can only assume that this contributed to sales of the Ball Chair.

Shop the look: We offer a more accessible and liveable version with our Gio Swivel Dining Chair, an ideal retro-futuristic inspired chair.