Last week, inspired by Easter, Design Moment looked at Arne Jacobsen’s classic and collectible Egg chair, pointing out that really it’s not very eggy at all – more an update on the centuries-old wing-back chair. For a chair that is closer to the ideal egg, Danish industrial designer Henrik Thor-Larsen’s Ovalia is more like it . This is one those designs that, when it appeared in 1968, identified so closely with the decade that it seems almost out of place in any other era.

The Ovalia’s futuristic design screams the swinging ’60s, when the future looked bright and full of things made in newfangled, man-made materials. The chair featured in countless era fashion shoots, with mini-skirted models curled up inside, or perhaps maybe with a wet-look, patent- leather knee-high boot dangling over the side.

Thor-Larsen began his career at Saab designing car seats. With his background in industrial materials, creating the Ovalia wasn’t such a leap. The shell is fibre-reinforced polyester painted a shiny white, while the womb-like interior can be upholstered in more than 20 colours. It is truly egg-shaped, with a front hatch cut out. The lining is padded and a cushion of the same colour fabric adds comfort. The foot rotates and can be painted to match the shell.

The Ovalia was exhibited for the first time at the Scandinavian Furniture Fair in 1968 and was sold until 1978. It was relaunched in 2005, possibly to tap into the growing popularity of all things retro. Last year Stockholm’s Nationalmuseum acquired an early black example of the egg-shaped easy chair.

It sometimes is attributed to Finnish designer Eero Aarnio, as if the Ovalia was an ovoid take on his wildly popular round Ball chair (1966), which also has a polyester shell lined with fabric.

The much-copied original Ovalias come with a sterling silver medallion, signed and numbered by the designer.