Nadja Schulze once opined that "Licht ist die tollste aller Sprachen", 'light is the greatest of all languages', and the light her lamps LiLa and Bow spoke at Grassimesse 2024 so enamoured the Grassimesse Jury they awarded Nadja the 2024 Grassimesse smow-Designpreis....... Grassimesse smow-Designpreis 2024 winner Nadja Schulze (photo courtesy Nadja Schulze) Born and raised in Leipzig, Nadja Schulze completed her Bachelor in Innenarchitektur at Burg Giebichenstein Kunsthochschule Halle in the
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In the exhibtion A Chair and You at the Grassi Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Leipzig, there is more than A Chair and You can look at them, study them, explore them, converse with them. But not sit on them. In the presentation Stühle zum (Be)Sitzen on the first floor landing of the Grassi Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Leipzig, there is more than A Chair and You can look at them, study them, explore them, converse with them. And sit on them. Thirteen chairs which unite more than just thirteen
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While the rest of the international design museum community retreat from the warmth of the summer sun, taking shelter in the cool of their depots and archives, Leipzig's Grassi Museum für Angewandte Kunst are busy preparing for one of its annual highlights: Grassimesse. A craft, applied art and design fair instigated in 1920 which has witnessed, and survived, the highs and lows of the past century in Leipzig and environs. And which since 1920 has been by invitation only: anyone and everyone can
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Wegneritis An Itch; A Compulsion; A Just One Good Chair Formally catalogued in the WHO International Classification of Diseases as MB23.W1, Wegneritis is a condition exclusive to furniture designers first recorded in Denmark where Jørgensen Wegner, a Hans by birth, and a leading carpenter of his age whose chairs were celebrated and acclaimed throughout all the known lands of that period, was beset by a compulsion, a creative itch, to design ever new chairs, "If only you could design just one
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June sees the start, in the northern hemisphere, of both meteorological summer and astronomical summer Yet for all that the arrival of summer invariably means an increasing living of life out-of-doors, and an increasing reluctance to concern oneself with overly cerebral activities, there are after all beaches to be lain on, alpine passes to be explored, and phenomenally lightweight pop novels to be read, it is important to not only take regular breaks from the sun, but also to ensure that you
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An (early) interior (and possibly early furniture) by Dr Josef Frank, undated, but before 1915 "Living rooms intended to serve more than purely representational purposes are not works of art or well-coordinated harmonies in colour and form, whose individual components (wallpaper, carpets, furniture, pictures) comprise a finished whole in which they are inextricably linked", opined Dr Josef Frank in 1919, and that not least because, "any new item added would be perceived as awkward,
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Chairs by Elisabeth von Baczko realised by Korbmacher Kapsch, Bremen Just a few short years ago Dr. Karl Schaefer, the new Director of the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne, opined that furniture and interior design required "a clear, well-disciplined architectural appreciation for the corporeal and its dimensions, for the tectonic and for the material, a certain dryness and an unapologetic sincerity" and for all "penetrating, deliberative understanding more than unbridled fantasy",
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After several years of preparation, and a lot of, at times (very) heated, discussion, this past March saw the staging of the inaugural Grassimesse Leipzig in the city's Rathaus. Instigated by Dr. Richard Graul, Director of the Leipzig Kunstgewerbemuseum by way of a response to, an answer to, the increasing concerns amongst many professional creatives regarding the quality of contemporary objects of daily use presented at the bi-annual Leipzig Fair, for all the quality of the novel machine
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So unwilling are we here at smow Blog to blow our own trumpet, we don't even own a trumpet. Why would we, we'd never blow it. It would just lie in the corner, unused, wastefully untooted. However, 2000 smow Blog posts is an occasion very much demanding of a fanfare. Technically 2001 smow Blog posts, the nature of these things meaning this post didn't appear as planned between Transform! Designing the Future of Energy at the Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein and 5 New Architecture & Design
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As Europe begins to ardently shake of the last remnants of winter and the first green and blue and yellow and white specks appear in parks and gardens, as the chance that summer might just arrive becomes tangible.... October can seem a mighty long way away. Unimaginable. But it is approaching. As is the 2024 Grassimesse. The path thereto has been laid and until Wednesday May 15th are all called upon to apply....... Staged in and by the Grassi Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Leipzig, and
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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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There is an argument to be made that while variation and uniqueness are inherent features of craft processes, design strives for the production of endless uniformity. Or perhaps more accurately design did: while the earliest design practitioners, and those of the 1920s and 1930s who followed them, very much (largely) sought to develop products that contemporary industry could produce en mass as exact replicas of one another, since the 1960s individuals and groups of designers have sought to
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Unlike a great many international craft, applied art and design fairs, entry to the annual Grassimesse Leipzig is strictly by jury selection. And has been since the first edition in 1920. 'twas, in many regards, one of the pillars on which the event established its reputation. And one which helps it maintain that reputation. The 2023 Grassimesse jury recently convened to review the abundance of applications for this year's edition, up some 33% on 2022, and, and perhaps more satisfyingly,
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Although the Grassimesse has been staged, with readily understandable pauses, since 1920, the Grassimesse smow-Designpreis is being staged for the first time in 2023. Which means a highly impressive roster of innovative, intelligent, imaginative, informative, designers from back in the day can't win it. Have, if one so will, missed out But you can win it and the associated €2,500. Or can if your reading this before Friday May 12th Sunday May 21st, the new extended, deadline for entries.
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The 2023 edition of the Grassimesse Leipzig will see the inaugural awarding of the €2,500 smow-Designpreis. The first dedicated design prize in the institution's long (hi)story. Entries are were open until Friday May 12th. But what if that first Grassimesse smow-Designpreis had been awarded not in 2023, but 1923? Who might have won? Who would the 1923 Grassimesse jury have selected from the many possible candidates? ???? A smow Blog fantasy final four....... Back in 1923 the
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For the first time in its long and illustrious history Leipzig's Grassimesse will award a dedicated design prize at its 2023 edition. More specifically, will award the €2,500 smow-Designpreis. The call for entries is now open, and you are all cordially invited closed....... Tracing its history back to 1920, the contemporary Grassimesse began as an, if you will, response on the part of Dr. Richard Graul, Director of the, then, Kunstgewerbemuseum Leipzig, the contemporary Grassi Museum für
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Following smow Turin's thoroughly unexpected, if in no way undeserved, victory in the 2021 smow Song Contest, it's off to Piemonte for the 2022 edition. A 2022 smow Song Contest being held very much in context of events 20 years previous....... 2002 was a very different world than the one we know today. In 2002, for example, following the ousting of the Taliban girls were allowed to attend school in Afghanistan; Chechens stormed the Dubrovka Theater in Moscow demanding an end to Russia's
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With spring approaching thoughts invariably turn to days spent out of doors, and, for those fortunate enough, to thoughts of leisurely days spent sat in the garden. Leisurely days spent sat in the garden, ideally, listening to music. ¿Listening to music about being sat in the garden; sat in the garden listening to songs about garden furniture......? The (hi)story of garden furniture is, inarguably, and somewhat logically, as old as the garden itself; a concept that stretches back to the
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We were obviously off ill on the day of the great global public debate about whether, given the myriad problems of contemporary societies, our resource emergencies, and the effortless manner in which we've managed to turn the Internet, the greatest tool ever placed at the disposal of a member of the Animalia, into a platform for hate and vanity and greed and crime; if given all that, if we all wanted to, if we all should, move to the Metaverse. But that debate must have occurred, for the
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After a long, challenging, year the smow Song Contest finds itself exactly where it was: Rotterdam. Not just the location, but the stage, the decoration, the costumes, even the bier en frieten exactly as they were twelve months ago. The decisive, defining, difference between the 2020 smow Song Contest and the 2021 smow Song Contest being the new understandings, the new perceptions, the new perspectives, the new vitality, the new passions, the new desires, the new old new, articulated by the
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The sense, logic or otherwise of the biannual changing of the clocks is a subject that can keep any conversation animated until the next change occurs......When it can start all over again. The biannual repositioning of the hands of time is however also an opportune moments to consider our relationship to time, for all our measurement of time, our harnessing of time, our charting of time, and of time metaphoric and time symbolic as represented by that embodiment of time tangible ... the clock.
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Our deliberations on Bauhaus and music very naturally led us to a whole raft of further deliberations on the associations between music and other forms of creative expression; and for all the question, given that so many of those Bauhäusler who had/could have had second careers as musicians were artists, are there designers who have/had second careers as musicians....... .......of course there are...... 6 D 030 Z by Charles & Ray Eames for Evans for Zenith Radio. We all know that designers
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In a year in which the familiar glow of many a beloved cultural event is missing, one beacon continues to shine. As a virtual, and in many regards virtual, event the smow Song Contest is one that can be staged regardless of prevailing physical social distancing regulations and physical travel restrictions. And while virtual closeness and virtual travel can never, and must never be allowed to, replace the physical, the 2020 smow Song Contest does allow us all an opportunity to cross great
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In these days of uncertainty one thing is indubitable: we will all become much better acquainted with our sofa, our couch and our settee. To accompany us all, a Radio smow playlist dedicated to the sofa, couch, settee and an invitation to reflect on the symbolic, figurative and cultural role of the sofa, couch, settee... ...a triumvirate of terms which raises the very obvious question as to the difference(s) The short answer is that today there is essentially none, the term you use being a
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