Pop art drew inspiration from advertising, packaging, comics and television shows of the era. It was deliberately low-brow. Or, as its most famous exponent once said, pop was 'about liking things'. Actually, Andy Warhol said quite a bit, including 'I only eat candy', so he is not to be taken too seriously.

The most famous artistic proponents of pop art, besides Warhol, included Roy Lichtenstein and James Rosenquist.

Warhol, originally a commercial illustrator, became known for screen-printed images of Campbell's soup cans, Marilyn Monroe (above) and Elvis Presley, which were 'a comment on a media saturated culture', as art critic Robert Hughes wrote in his book American Visions.

It's not surprising young industrial and interior designers were keen to adopt this youthful aesthetic. As a reaction against the stark, serious furniture that was built to last a lifetime, many latched on to the idea of cheap, disposable design and in doing so created furniture that was as throwaway as fast fashion. These included De Pas, D'Urbino and Lomazzi, with its PVC Blow chair (1967) - an inflatable seat that became an icon of 60s pop design. Some people (probably under the influence of strange mushrooms) filled their Blow chairs with water and tropical fish. Of course, the fish suffocated. Fortunately, a chair full of dead guppies has never been hip.

The beanbag was another creation that was not meant to last (although they can be found in TV rooms worldwide). Originally called the Sacco, the first beanbags were chic pieces of pear-shaped designer furniture. Created by the Italian design team of Gatti, Paolini and Teodoro in the late 60s, they were made from fine leather and are still manufactured by Zanotta.

There are countless manifestations of throwaway furniture made from corrugated cardboard. In 1964 British designer Peter Murdoch developed the paper chair and covered it in pop-art motifs. The chair could be stamped out for a few cents and would last up to six months. Even architect Frank Gehry got in on the act, with the 1969-73 cardboard series Easy Edges. Although none of it looks particularly comfortable, original pieces fetch up to US$9,000 at auction.

Not all 60s pop furniture was designed to become landfill. Many pieces are still doing service in homes across the globe, such as the amorphic Up series of chairs by Italian designer Gaetano Pesce, some of which appeared in Stanley Kubrick's sci-fi flick, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Ditto anything by Pierre Paulin from the 60s. Experimenting with Pirelli foam and moulded laminate timber, the French designer arrived at such iconic designs as the Tongue, Mushroom, Orange Slice and Tulip chairs. His earliest design for Artifort, the Globe chair, would be shown to an audience of millions when it appeared in the James Bond film Dr No.

Denmark's Verner Panton also produced some incredible pop designs, the most notable being the S chair, the first single-material, single-form chair to be injection-moulded. It was Panton's bold use of colour that grabbed attention. His funky room installation for Bayer's 'Visiona II' exhibition in 1970 featured moulded foam curves in saturated blues, yellows, red and electric pink.

Indeed, the design aesthetic of pop art was extremely colourful - and not for the faint hearted. Everything from paintwork to wallpaper was loud.

Love it or hate it, few would argue that pop wasn't, at the very least, a bit of fun. Although sometimes you can have just a little too much fun.