History Lesson: Origin of Bean Bag Chairs

Change is the rule of our society, to better our living conditions and provide greater luxury. The history of bean bag chairs show that the evolution of it was because of this reason. The bean bag chair was not developed suddenly. Various other attempts were made to create a chair comfortable for all needs. In 1967, a dome-shaped foam chair, called "Sea Urchin" was made by Roger Dean. In 1968, another soft, pliable chair, called the "Ciprea", was created by Afra and Tobia Scapra. These chairs were the precursors of the first bean bag chairs.

It was in 1969 that the first bean bag chairs were created by Italian designers Gatti, Paolini and Teodora. The bean bag chairs were prepared for a furniture farm called Zanotta. The first bean bag chairs were called the "Sacco".

The Sacco bean bag chairs were made of leather and were pear-shaped. What made the Sacco chairs soft were the expanded polystyrene beads that were filled inside the chairs. They made the bean bag chairs foamless and flexible. But it was not then that people got to use the bean bag chair. Various attempts to mass-produce these bean bag chairs failed.

Once the process of mass-production started, the Sacco became a craze. Some believe that these bean bag chairs occurred accidentally when polystyrene off-cuts were thrown into a bag at the end of the Styrofoam production line. Furniture was supposed to be static and inflexible before the discovery of the bean bag chairs. The Sacco bean bags were the first widely popular furniture items that could move with the human body. The bean bag chairs became an icon of "POP" culture.