For years, recalls Martin Hatebur, president of Kunsthalle Basel, the innovative Swiss art space, there was one room of the center's beloved restaurant that didn't seem quite up to the standards of its surrounding areas. "It was just a bit sad, and no one wanted to sit in [it], so I thought, We have to refresh this room," Hatebur recalls. Enter a longtime friendship, which would result in a spectacular new installation and design for the once-drab room.
"I went to university with Verner Panton's daughter," Hatebur says. The renowned Danish designer, incidentally, was a regular at Kunsthalle Basel's restaurant while living in the city. "I was talking to her and to her mother about redoing this room, and they said, 'Well, we have this shell lamp in a storage room, if you'd like to come and see it.'"
"Shell lamp" is somewhat of an understatement: The fixture in question is less lamp, more large-scale installation, a marvel in thousands of dangling shells that Panton created for his own home in 1972. It had been in storage for some 30 years. His widow and daughter agreed to lend it to Hatebur free of charge, and it immediately became the pièce de résistance of the room.
Before that, though, there was quite a bit of installation work—and a bit of restoration. "The lamp came in 52 parts, and each part is affixed to a wooden panel," explains Hatebur. "Some of them are painted different colors, because Panton had the lamp installed in his house, and then he moved to a bigger one and added some panels. Once we affixed it to the ceiling, we then had to replace quite a few shells. We ordered the exact shells he had used, and this company Verpan, which does a lot of reeditions of Panton furniture, came and brought some art students to do the restoration."
Of course, a room graced with such a showstopper deserves decor to fit, so Hatebur set about creating a new scheme to complement the lamp. "We hung the lamp in this room, and then when the lamp was hanging, we saw that the furniture didn't really go with the lamp, so we thought we'd just have to redo the room," says Hatebur. He worked in tandem with his architect and the Panton family to develop an interior fitting of its ceiling.
First, a bench was installed along the wall of the room to serve as a sort of frame. Then, Hatebur worked with the president of Dedar, a close friend, to choose fabrics for the room's chairs (all custom-designed). "We wanted to have velvet because I thought it would give a good feel to the room," Hatebur recalls. "We first selected the green because outside the windows in the room, you look into the garden and it's very green, so that fit in well. Then, we wanted something else of the same softness, and we chose this greenish blue and the pink."
The result is an interior that is sumptuous and elegant without distracting from the mesmerizing undulation of Panton's masterpiece. In short, we imagine Panton would be thrilled to dine here.
