Any email that starts “Please join us for A Taste of Austrian Design and Lifestyle in Stockholm” is going to get our attention.
And quickly lose it when we realise that no one is actually offering to pay for us to join them.
Just inviting us. If we should, by chance, happen to be in Stockholm.
However on this occasion the affront was short lived.
For despite numerous good reasons to ignore the exhibition – the word “Lifestyle” in the title and the objectionable construction of the exhibition concept around tired marketing led, tourist gaze stereotypes being the two most obvious – “Design meets Lifestyle” offers a wonderful and well considered synopsis of “Austrian Design”
Starting with design classics such as the Chair 14 by Michael Thonet, Josef Hoffmann’s 1929 Melone tea service or a most delightful brass chandelier by Josef Frank, “Design meets Lifestyle” then progresses to provide a pretty comprehensive overview of some of the best creative talent currently to be found in Austria: EOOS, breadedEscalope, Julia Landsiedel, mischer’traxler, March Gut et al….
Sandwiched as it is between the economically important design nations Germany and Italy, it can be all to easy to forget just what a rich tradition and depth of design talent Austria has to offer and so by extension how important the country is and was to international design,
And simply reading the “Design meets Lifestyle” catalogue reminds us that without design talent there wouldn’t be a design industry.
It is highly unlikely that we will make it to Stockholm for “Design meets Lifestyle”; however, in four weeks we will be making our annual pilgrimage to Austria for Vienna Design Week.
And aside from texts guaranteed to feature several of the names currently on display in Stockholm, we hope, as ever, to make a few new discoveries.
We’ll keep you posted.
“Design meets Lifestyle” runs at Designgalleriet, Odengatan 21, 11424 Stockholm until September 29th 2012.
If you, by chance, happen to be in Stockholm…….
A brass chandelier by Josef Frank. Part of "Design meets Lifestyle" at Designgalleriet, Stockholm
The b2 kitchen by EOOS for bulthaup. Part of "Design meets Lifestyle" at Designgalleriet, Stockholm