Burg Giebichenstein Kunsthochschule Halle - Faserland oder 8mm und 100% Bio, Grassimesse 2023, Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Leipzig Cutting straight to the chase, in our post from the Burg Giebichenstein Kunsthochschule Halle Jahresausstellung 2023 we noted "as ever we may have missed things, in fact we know we did": the project Faserland oder 8mm und 100% Bio was that thing we knew we'd missed. Whereby we still don't know where it was hidden, for we can't remember a single square centimetre
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The H2L lounge chair by Studio Machwerk, as seen at Grassimesse 2023, Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Leipzig One of the joys of Grassimesse is that it has never been about big names and star turns, anyone and everyone can apply. All you have to do is convince the jury you deserve to be there. As newbies Studio Machwerk did. And did. Established in 2022 (possibly 2023, yes, we've forgotten, but certainly not before 2022) by Christopher (Ebert) and Josef (Ehnert), both graduates of the Faculty
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Adobe by Ralf Stauss / Papier Langackerhäusl, as seen at Grassimesse 2023, Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Leipzig As previously noted in these dispatches, in the 18th century serious attempts were made to employ Papier-mâché as a material for furniture construction, primarily in context of the so-called 'japanning' of the period: a fashion, a t****, in 18th and 19th century Europe for 'Oriental' lacquered goods that saw European craftsfolk develop their own local alternatives, not least as a
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Andreas Möller - Weberei Hamburg & Flying8, as seen at Grassimesse 2023, Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Leipzig In the earliest years of the Grassimesse one of the more regularly encountered products was handwoven textiles, textiles being as they are and were the sort of product where the hand versus machine, craft versus industry, debates of the early 20th century can be particularly well, and particularly well focussed, undertaken. And that not least because textiles stand, in many regards,
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New Sources by Matthias Gschwendtner, as seen at Grassimesse 2023, Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Leipzig Developed by Matthias Gschwendtner in context of his Diploma Project at the Universität der Künste, UdK, Berlin New Sources sees, and simplifying more than is perhaps prudent, Matthias employ Artificial Intelligence, 3D scanning, algorithmic modelling and robotic milling to form silver birch branches into the necessary components for a chair. Which, yes, does sound like an awful lot of
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Let's be honest, it wouldn't be smow if it followed the rules and did that which you'd expected it to. Thus it should have come as absolutely no surprise to anyone that the inaugural Grassimesse smow-Designpreis produced not the expected one, but two, joint, co-winners: Budapest based designer Annabella Hevesi and her studio Line and Round I O and Nürnberg based glassmaker Cornelius Réer....... smow co-founder Martina Stadler reads the laudatio for Cornelius Réer (m) Annabella Hevesi / Line
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While in many regards being selected to participate at the Grassimesse can be considered an accolade in itself, the event also awards a number of prizes: some specific, others general, all well worth winning. Ahead of the opening of the 2023 edition the winners of the seven Grassi Prizes were announced on Thursday evening in the Grassi Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Leipzig. Selected by the 2023 Grassmesse jury from the 80+ exhibitors, the victorious seven are....... Grassipreis der Carl und
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"Something is happening to the way people live" opined Nanna Ditzel in 1961; changing realities which caused her to reflect that, in terms of our furniture and interiors, "don't we carry around a whole load of stuff that is old and defunct - and could actually be different."1 With the exhibition Nanna Ditzel. Taking Design to New Heights, Trapholt, Kolding, explore how Nanna Ditzel approached and understood and realised that "different"....... Nanna Ditzel. Taking Design to New Heights,
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Room for Change by Design Campus/d-o-t-s, Vienna Design Week 2023 As noted from the exhibtion Plant Fever. Towards a Phyto-centred design at Schloss Pillnitz, Dresden, a component of its tenure in Dresden was its integration into the 2023 Design Campus Summer School, a platform of the Kunstgewerbemuseum Dresden, a platform under the direction in 2023 of Studio d-o-t-s a.k.a. Laura Drouet and Olivier Lacrouts, curators of Plant Fever; and in which context the Summer School participants
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Stargazer chair by Klemens Schillinger (l) and Campfire by Lino Gasparitsch, as seen at Garten, Galerie Rauminhalt, Vienna Design Week 2023 As noted in our post from Ums Eck – 1 M² by Studio Högl Borowski, Vienna Design Week has always been an event that has taken an interest in Vienna, in the fabric of Vienna, the residents of Vienna and the relationships within the city. Including the many green spaces, or potential, possible, green spaces in the city, such as the Czerninplatz that was the
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For all that the annual Leipzig Grassimesse is and always has been as a sales fair, a place to peruse, discourse with and purchase, contemporary craft, applied art and design, and thereby an opportunity to support contemporary craft, applied art and design practitioners, or perhaps more accurately an opportunity to support those practitioners whose practice you most enjoy, it has also always been a platform for creative schools and their students to present their works and approaches and
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1 M² by Studio Högl Borowski, the Ums Eck project for Vienna Design Week 2023 One of the real joys of Vienna Design Week is that it has always actively and naturally, self-evidently, included the city in all its hues, and expressions, and realities in its programme, has always understood definitions of design to include not only social design and urban design in addition to the more commercial definitions, but also to include the exchange and interaction between all manifestations of design
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Pendulum Lamp by Matej Štefanac, as seen at Vienna Design Week 2023 In many regards the name of Ljubljana based designer Matej Štefanac's new lamp is a misnomer, because pendulums swing and the defining feature of, the argument made by, the joy of, Matej's lamp is that doesn't: It is resolutely, tenaciously, unapologetically static. Until you move it, then it follows your every whim; the technology allowing as it does the lamp to be swung through 180 degrees so that it can shine directly to
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Established in Budapest in 2004 by textile designer Szilvia Szigeti and her interior designer husband Tamás Radnóti, Design Without Borders understands itself, and summarising to the point of inaccuracy, as a platform for international design dialogue across, or perhaps more accurately indifferent to, not only national borders but borders of genre, scale, approach, position et al. By way of preparing for the platform's forthcoming 20th birthday a showcase of projects presented, hosted, by
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The MOWO - Move with VIVI and CC collections, as seen at Vienna Design Week 2023 We first met MOWO, Move with Wood, and its designer Lisa Stolz, at the 2018 Central Saint Martins, London, Degree Show where it was very obviously our stand out project from that year's show, from that year's graduation projects at Central Saint Martins, being as it was the only project we discussed in any depth. In 2021, in the midst of Corona, Lisa Stolz established, via a Kickstarter campaign, MOWO as
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It's been a while, and we were beginning to think it would never happen again; however, after an inordinately long absence September 2023 sees us once again meet up with Vienna Design Week....... For a great many years Vienna Design Week was a key component of our year, not only because, much as the arrival of celery on menus, and plates, informed an A. A. Milne that autumn was with us, Vienna Design Week signalled that summer was well and truly over, thus providing a little, and much need,
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In the alpine regions of Europe the arrival of September marks the start of the Almabtrieb, that annual migration of the cattle, sheep and goats of the region from their high pastures to the valleys far, far below. A migration undertaken because, as the cattle, sheep and goats of the alps innately understand, September is the month when the global architecture and design museum community (slowly) end their summer siesta and begin to invite us all to peruse their autumn/winter exhibition
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We're not saying that Capellagården is the best design school in the world. But would say it is, without question, one of the most delightful and most engaging and most relaxing to visit, one of the best to visit. A genuine joy that was denied us during the Covid years. But one we weren't going to give up on. In summer 2023 the stars aligned and we ventured once again over the seas to Öland....... Capellagården Summer Exhibition 2023 Established in the village of Vickleby1 on the eastern
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The popular Bauhaus focus, preoccupation, of discussions on creativity in the 1920s very naturally leads to us all ignoring other important protagonists, causes us all, when oft unwittingly, to miss other equally valid, and enjoyable, paths to appreciations of developments in craft, design, technology and our objects of daily use in the early decades of the 20th century, that important, and still very relevant, period where handwork increasingly ceded to industry. With Haël. Margarete
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Switzerland A Confoederatio; A Range; A Context For a great many centuries the lands of the contemporary Switzerland were unknown, locked as they were behind and between the towering, daunting, peaks of the Toblerone cordillera; but then a fearless explorer by the name of Heidi, together with her cook Thomas, broke through the once impenetrable Toblerone and discovered a region of vibrant, viridescent valley pastures populated by cows, sheeps, goats, marmots and innumerable quadrilingual
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Arising in the early 1950s from a collective, a community, who had been ardently opposed to the NSDAP, their world view and their warmongering dictatorship, the Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm understood itself very much in context of the post-War re-development of society, the post-War development of a new democratic, future-resilient, society. In West Germany and further afield. Thus it is little wonder that synthetic plastics, that material class which post-War offered, embodied,
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Summer Break!!! As in August 2022!! And once again, not us, we're here, we're busy, we're keen, we're chomping at the bit; but the international architecture and design museum community have very clearly decided amongst themselves not to open new exhibitions in August. Whereby, yes, August always was a slow month for new openings but that in August 2022 and August 2023 we should find but one new showcase is a signal of something more than a coincidence. And, as with August 2022, one
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As we were preparing for our trip to Halle and the 2023 Burg Giebichenstein Kunsthochschule Jahresausstellung one of those people on the edge of the smow Blog, one of those people who are so important to its operation, asked us how many summer exhibitions we'd seen at Burg Halle. A question that caused a terror to develop within us as the enormity of the number forming before our eyes became ever more distinct and discernable; but then, before we gave vocal form to such an improbable,
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As we noted, almost exactly 12 months ago, although we here at smow Blog are more or less fully up and running again after the Covid enforced disruption, the extremely complex nature of the smow Blog machinery means that there are still a few elements of the whole that are awaiting a proper re-boot, including, as we noted almost exactly 12 months ago, our famed, and falafel fixated, annual #campustour through European design school summer exhibitions. Which doesn't mean that we aren't visiting
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