For people who spend most of their working lives sat at desks, publishers and authors have a frightening disregard for comfort when it comes to chairs.
Or at least they do if the furniture we saw at the 2010 Leipzig Buchmesse was a measure of the industry norm.
Cheap folding chairs, cheap copies of designer furniture classics being presented as originals and general cheap tat as far as the eye could see.
Fortunately one or two of the exhibitors seemed better informed. Below a few snapshots of some of the happier moments of the 2010 Leipzig Buchmesse from a designer furniture perspective:
French/German culture channel ARTE with Swan Chairs by Arne Jacobsen from Fritz Hansen
German news channel Phoneix with Tom Vacs by Ron Arad for Vitra
MDR with LEM by Shin and Tomoko Azumi for lapalma
Reclam Verlag with a USM Haller reception desk.
Fachhochschule Potsdam with a tribute to fellow Brandenburger Egon Eiermann. Eiermann table frames from Richard Lampert and SE 68 chairs from Wilde + Spieth.
And perhaps most impressive of all the students of Bauhaus University Weimar who had, in our eyes, a stand as dedicated to Block by Frank Gehry from Vitra.
We can only the hope the situation improves for the Leipzig Buchmesse 2011.
