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articles > Decoration events

Decoration

The icon object from the sixties is back

By Sylvie Grifthins
16/12/2003

The favourite Tam Tam stool is back. After an incredible 12 millions copies sold worldwide, the petroleum crisis of the 70's interrupted its sales for more than 30 years. Today, The Tam Tam is back more actual than ever and extremely colourful.
To take you back a few years, the Tam Tam was created by Henry Massonnet, an industrial creator specialised in the fabrication of plastic injection called STAMP who produced plastic iceboxes for fishermen. He had the fantastic idea to invent a stool that could be easily dismantled and assembled, economic, resistant and last but not least very light. In 1968 the Tam Tam was born. When Brigitte Bardot was photographed seating on one, its success was immediate. Philippe Barbier was the first one to sell them and then it was Prisunic.
Until 2002 its production is slow. That year, Sacha Cohen, a seventies' antiques collector, who was not even born in 1968, buys, in a car boots sale, an old Tam Tam; its revival story begins. He decides to contact Henry Massonnet and creates Branex Design. The new Tam Tam collection is invented and built in the original mould in 13 different colours (7 are translucent). They can even be customised with any fabric e.g stretch jean, skai or fishnet. Some creators got inspired by it from Philippe Stark's 1991 with the Bubu stool to more recently Mattheo Thum.
         
Note that Massonnet's genius did not just stop there. He was also the creator of the mould-injected chair (The so called Java chair) used in nearly all the gardens. Massonnet was an incredible man who remained modest despite his success. He was once heard saying:"An hyperbolic parallelepiped, two identical parts easy to assemble, you didn't have to be a genius to think of it"   
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You will find the new Tam Tam at Habitat. They have been distributing it since 2002. To see the list of adresses or in France : Branex Design, 33 (0)1 49 42 17 33, from 20Euros
   

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