Eero Aarnio, the Finnish designer, was a man of his time. Pop culture was in full sway, it was time to get crazy, and the Eero Aarnio Ball Chair joined the fun. Eero was a master of plastics and a lover of color. As a furniture designer, he blended his two passions into seating innovations that took the furniture world by storm. He was an artisan and loved to play with geometry as well, particularly spherical geometry. The Aarnio Ball Chair was simply an outgrowth of his interest in all things round. For instance, he designed a Pastil chair that looked like a solid inner tube, a bubble chair that hung from the ceiling and a Tomato chair that had the appearance of three joined spheres, and in the horizontal plane, he designed a "Screw Table", as the name implies. Born in 1932, it wasn't long before the interior designer became an entrepreneur, when, at the age of 30 he opened his own firm. From that point on, with his creativity on full burner, he turned out innovative designs that not only earned him the American Industrial Design award in 1968, but also landed him a place of honor in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

The Eero Ball Chair is a picture of perfectly proportioned symmetry. Originally crafted of fiberglass and plastic, it was cream colored on the exterior with a bright orange interior. It was as though one-third had been sliced off a sphere at an upward thirty-degree angle to expose the upholstered interior. When the occupant is seated, the Aarnio ball chair chair encloses him—wrapped in a cocoon, buffered from the world, and made to feel safely ensconced. Today, modern furnishings enthusiasts can find replicas of the Eero Aarnio Ball Chair if they are willing to do a little research online. Then, if they find one, they can consider themselves fortunate to have the proper setting for it in keeping with other pieces that shine as brightly. It is definitely an attention-getter. Even though furniture companies originally loved the simplicity of turning out this chair in mass production, today's companies are less inclined to manufacture pieces that cannot be milled. Plastic requires special treatment. When you see a piece of furniture made of plastic it is usually the product of a high-level operation. However, the eero ball chair can be obtained, and is certainly worth the effort. Picturing it in a modern boudoir, keeping company with a curved canopy bed would be a perfect pairing. In a kitchen next to a curvaceous counter would be most attractive. A teen-age girl would find it the best place in the world to carry on a "private" cell phone conversation with her bff, even in the family room—no one would hear, you see.