Famous Furniture in Film 10th August 2021

Product Placement is not limited to clothes, cars, alcohol or tech; furniture is also needed to design the wide range of sets. From period dramas to spaceships, the right furniture can make or break a space. Over the years we have seen thousands of creative and beautiful sets which have used particular designers and furnishings. Today we are looking at a handful of pieces that have made their debut on the silver screen.

The Eames Lounge Chair

We start the series with one of our favourites, and possibly the most-placed chair: the Eames Lounge Chair. We’ll often see the Eames Lounge Chair in a character’s home or office when the set-decorator is portraying a stylish room or character. You may recognise the chair from a large range of film and TV programmes, including: Tony Stark’s mansion in Iron Man, Click, The Ghost Writer, Frasier, Gossip Girl, Hope Springs, The Housemaid, Tron Legacy, Closer and there is even an animated version of the chair in Archer. Charles and Ray Eames designed the first Eames lounge chair and footstool as a gift for Billy Wilder, the director of Some Like it Hot.

Bocca Sofa

The Bocca Sofa (bocca literally translated as ‘mouth’ in Italian) was designed in 1970 by a group of Italian architect students called Studio 65. The Bocca was built around the time when Pop Art reached its peak and was heavily influenced by Dali’s 1938 lips inspired by Mae West. The sofa, originally designed for a Milanese beauty salon, is the ultimate statement piece which is fun, colourful and luxurious. It’s no surprise that it was dressed in the uber-retro and wacky Austin Powers film The Spy who Shagged me, highlighting the ‘shagadelic’ nature of the film with the oversized lips and encapsulating the style of the 1960s and 70s.

LC2/LC3 Armchair

The third piece we are looking at is the LC2 and LC3 Armchair created in 1928 by the iconic Swiss and French architects Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret and Charlotte Perriand. Le Corbusier, inspired by German and Danish designers creating radical designs in tubular steel dubbed these chairs as ‘machines for sitting in’.

Comfortable, effortless and timeless, this Mid-Century modern armchair, which is from the Grand Confort line of cube-like chairs, still has a modernist feel to it despite being nearly 100 years old. The LC3 armchair was seen in the wold-famous BBC 1 series Sherlock Holmes, as Benedict Cumberbatch’s comfortable thinking spot.

The LC2 and LC3 were also seen in Maude Lebowski’s art studio in my ultimate design-crush film The Big Lebowski, showing us again how cool and avant-garde the armchair is. This particularly fits the character because Maude (played by Julianne Moore) herself is also avant-garde; so much so that she was based on the artist Carolee Schneemann ‘who bared her buttocks for Yoko Ono’. Quite fitting for such an iconic chair, no?

Buben & Zorweg Safe

A slightly particular and special furnishing that has been placed in film is the Orion safe designed by Buben & Zorweg. The 50-inch safe comes with shelves and drawers containing jewellery inserts and the standard eight watch-winders (up to 24 watch-winders can be included in this size safe).

You may recognise it from the Dirty Rotten Scoundrels remake, The Hustle, starring Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson as con-artists. Anne Hathaway, master crook, uses the safe to store stolen cash and jewellery from her targets. The South of France, diamonds and a $55,300 Buben & Zorweg safe… it’s all very luxurious and high-end! If that wasn’t exclusive enough, the safe also appears in Deckard Shaw’s (Jason Statham) underground luxury hideout in Hobbs & Shaw.

So, next time you sit down to watch a film or a series, make sure to have a look at the furnishings.. you never know what might inspire you to design your house or your office!

And if you are interested in having your products placed in film, TV or music videos, please don’t hesitate to contact Seesaw on info@seesawmedia.co.uk