Hungarian émigré Peter Ghyczy’s space age-looking pod chair is usually called a garden chair – and it was designed to be used indoors and out – but, in truth, it has become such a collectible item that anyone lucky enough to have one is not going to risk it in the great outdoors.

Ghyczy was a designer in a polyurethane factory in west Germany and his chair was as much about experimenting with the new material as it was about creating a piece of furniture.

The lid is supposed to be watertight and it was available in many bright colours while the low seat suggests informality.

Cold War

The shape makes it look like a UFO and, when it was designed, the obsession with the space age was in full swing.

For a piece of furniture that looks so much fun it has serious political resonance.

It was included in the 2008 Victoria and Albert Museum exhibition Cold War Modern: Art and Design in a Divided World, 1945-75 because, while it was designed in west Germany, its manufacturer quickly realised it could be made much more cheaply in east Germany – and this was at a time when such an industrial transaction between capitalist west Germany and its socialist neighbour to the east was not officially acknowledged.

That’s why the futuristic chair is often regarded as an east German product, although from the start its market was in the west – the factory workers in east Germany could never have afforded it.