HOLLY HUNT is excited to introduce The First Collection by Vladimir Kagan Design Group. Led by Chris Eitel, Kagan’s protégé and current Director of Design and Production at the legacy brand, this launch includes modern translations of Kagan’s earliest designs – a chair and a table, originally designed for his parents’ home in 1947. Launching this April, the collection will be available exclusively through HOLLY HUNT showrooms and HOLLY HUNT partner showrooms.

Before Vladimir Kagan made a name for himself as a pioneer of mid century modern design, he worked alongside his father to learn the trade of carpentry. In 1947, Kagan produced two original designs for his parents’ home, which later came to be known as The First Chair and The First Table. Versions of these pieces hit the market in 1948 at the first Kagan store on E 65th St. in New York City, but were phased out around 1950 when Kagan partnered with textile designer Hugo Dreyfuss to open the Kagan-Dreyfuss Store on 57th St. Today, they can be seen as archetypes of what would later be recognized worldwide as Vladimir Kagan’s avant-garde design aesthetic.

“Being intimately familiar with the Kagan design DNA, there are elements within both of these pieces that influenced his designs for the next several decades,” says Eitel, Director of Design and Production at Vladimir Kagan Design Group. “Vladi was endlessly inspired by nature, and you can see this in the way he designed The First Table with a set of four very thin, flared legs that evoke the stance of a baby fawn or filly. This First Collection honors his two earliest designs and represents the first iteration of a design language that defined Vladi’s long and illustrious career.”

With these reintroductions, Eitel stayed true to the original form of each piece, making slight adjustments for today’s lifestyle. For the armchair version, he gave the inside of the arms a more sculpted design compared to the original – a feature that honors Kagan’s ethos of sculpting “vessels to hold the human body” – while he kept the outside of the arms a more defined line like the original. The First Chair and The First Table are offered in their vintage dimensions, but Eitel also designed a larger-scale version of the chair to better suit the needs of the modern home.

“Chris has proven himself a noble steward of the Vladimir Kagan brand,” says Jo Annah Kornak, SVP and Executive Creative Director at HOLLY HUNT. “Over the past 8 years, he has struck a perfect balance between preserving the brand’s rich history with thoughtful reintroductions of vintage designs while also leading the brand into the future with original pieces that translate Kagan’s design language for the modern market.”

This launch comes after the Fall 2022 introduction of Eitel’s Forward Collection, a series of original pieces informed by Kagan’s design DNA. The First Collection furthers Eitel’s mission to honor his mentor’s legacy with regular vintage reintroductions.