Cranbrook An Alma Mater; An Academy of Art; A colony of experimentation Cranbrook Academy of Art arose on the Cranbrook Estate, a private fiefdom nestling quietly in a forest glade to the north of the contemporary Detroit ruled by the Booth dynasty; and a fiefdom which in the Age of George and Ellen of Booth developed from an agrarian farm into a garden of creativity. As the Cranbrook Scrolls record, George of Booth was a devotee of The Artsandcrafts, a movement most popularly embodied by
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On May 17th 1955 Charles Eames*, as assignor to the Herman Miller Furniture Company, was granted US patent 2,708,476 for a "Furniture Frame Construction", specifically for, "a skeleton type metal furniture frame or shell construction" formed from "a plurality of lengths of wire arranged in crossed relation with another plurality of lengths of wire and welded thereto at their intersection..."1 A patent which although important and interesting in itself, is and was in many regards just as
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"Father of Eero....." So or similar is in many circles the accepted form for referring to the Finnish architect and urban planner Eliel Saarinen. A highly unsatisfactory term of reference and one which in many respects denies and defames how much more there is and was to the man and his talents. Eliel Saarinen (1873-1950) Gottlieb Eliel Saarinen was born on August 20th 1873 in the remote eastern Finnish town of Rantasalmi where his father served as a Lutheran pastor. In 1875 Eliel's father
read more"We have a World's Fair opening in New York again today and it will, as always with fairs, offer the opportunity for looking forward into the future and backward into the past", announced the New York Times on April 22nd 1964 with the unmistakable self-confident bluff of a journalist racing to meet a deadline and struggling to make the patently obvious sound anything but. Although not officially sanctioned as a "World's Fair" the 1964/65 New York World's Fair attracted some 66 nations -
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It is a universally acknowledged fact that men only buy Playboy to read the articles. And we only visited the exhibition "Playboy Architecture, 1953-1979" at the Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt in order to, to, to, tttoooooooo see the Eames DCW that is on display.....mmmm...... its not a chair you see that often..... aaahhh......mmmmmmmm..... or the Bertoia Diamond Chair? [Audible nervous cough. Depart stage left.] Originating from a project by students at Princeton University
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We know what you're thinking, lost furniture designs from Eero Saarinen and Charles Eames. ??? Yup. Two of the most important, influential and best known protagonists of mid-century modern design have a product series that has vanished without trace. And in our opinion it vanished exactly because Saarinen and Eames are two of the best known protagonists of mid-century modern design. But let's start at the beginning.... In 1940 the Museum of Modern Art New York staged their "Organic Design
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On March 4th 2012 the Grassi Museum for Applied Arts Leipzig opened the final part of their permanent exhibition. An exhibition very close to our hearts. Now you know us, we 've nothing against baroque or ancient Japanese furniture and objects. But our hearts do beat a little faster when we get to the late 19th century. Mies van der Rohe bending metal. Alvar Aalto bending wood. Verner Panton bending plastic. Axel Buether bending light. It's all there in “Art Nouveau to Present” Plus a
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On Wednesday February 29th the Hofmobiliendepot Vienna open their 2012 spring exhibition. We had hoped to make it to the opening; but life being what it is. We wont. Sadly. Not least because the exhibition explores, for us, one of the most interesting periods of design - The Sixties. Not interesting as in, "Wow! Look how bright, spacey and groovy everything is!!!" Obviously. But interesting in terms of what it brought into the design vocabulary and the doors that it opened. And because it
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As tradition demands the Museum für Angewandte Kunst Köln (MAKK) have organised a furniture themed, special exhibition to coincide with the Cologne Furniture Fair. Under the title "Von Aalto bis Zumthor: Architektenmöbel" ("From Aalto to Zumthor: Furniture by Architects") the MAKK is presenting over 120 examples of furniture designed by professional architects. As older readers will have long since accepted, the "Furniture Architect" is a pet subject of ours. Not just because the architects
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"Wooden spoon for pickled vegetables by John F. Kennedy" ? ? ? John F. Kennedy. Green Mountain Woodcrafters, Vermont. And no relation of Teddy or Robert. Still cheered us up. From March 20th until April 25th 1951 Stuttgart hosted the first post-war exhibition of modern American home furnishings and appliances in Europe. Organised by the New York Museum of Modern Art under the title "Design for Use, USA", the exhibition featured a cross section of American domestic design. And a Who's
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Da vi for nylig var på en lille rejse fik vi øje på en ægte Eames fiberglasbænk fra Herman Miller i en lufthavn. Tager man stedets ret begrænsede faciliteter i betragning, forekommer betegnelsen 'lufthavn' faktisk noget optimistisk, og vores hektiske fotografering af bænken og Herman Miller-klistermærkerne resulterede også i en del latter fra folk omkring os - altså folk, som bruger deres tid på at fotografere fly!! Herefter, da vi var faldet lidt ned efter den hektiske fotografering,
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Just as the Man in the Corner Shop was famously satisfied with his life until the Boss from the Factory turned up to buy cigars - so too were we content with our life until 00:42 this morning. Because then we received the invitation to Frank and Oliver's next exhibition in Zürich: „Schöne neue Welt - American Mid-century Design“ On their many trips through North and Central America Oliver Müller and Frank Landau have acquired a unique collection of objects. In the exhibition „Schöne neue Welt
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Timely to the end of our rantings against the current state of Danish design - the Danish Design Centre in Copenhagen recently hosted the Danish Design Prize awards 2010/11 In his introduction the Danish Design Centre CEO Christian Scherfig asks " ... what is good design in the 21st century ?" The DDCs answer is 11 prize winners from 17 nominations in 4 categories. Whereas most would have also been good design in the 20th century, and a couple even in the 19th, all of the featured designs
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August 20th marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Finnish architect/designer Eero Saarinen. Eero Saarinen had - in all probability - very little career choice other than that of architect: Not only was his father Eliel Saarinen one of Finland's most celebrated architects, but two of his uncles followed the same profession. In addition his mother, Loja Gesellius Saarinen, was a sculptress and textile designer. Eero Saarinen spent his first 13 years in his birthplace, Kirkkonummi on the
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After the strenuous match against Alexander Girard, France decided to rest Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec for the match against Eero Saarinen. Their replacement, the enfant terrible of contemporary French design Philippe Starck however failed to match the old Finnish master; too often Philippe Starck strove forward with fairly predictable and poorly considered approaches. Eero Saarinen was able to make use of the gaps produced by Philippe Starck to good effect scoring with his Tulip Chair and a
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It may not be the most universally recognised example of either Charles Eames' nor Eero Saarinen's canon however their 1940 "Conversation Chair" is without doubt one of the more important examples of 20th century furniture design. Designed for the New York Museum of Modern Art's "Organic Design in Home Furnishings" competition the Conversation Chair was a concept piece and Eames' and Saarinen's first attempt at moulding synthetics. At that time however the technology lagged somewhat behind
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Eames DSR from Vitra On a recent trip we discovered a genuine Herman Miller Eames fibreglass chair bench at an airport. Being a relatively small airport - in fact so small that the word "airport" appears optimistic in describing it's capabilities - our frenzied photographing of the chairs and the Herman Miller stickers caused quite a lot of amusement. And that among individuals who spend their spare time photographing aircraft!!! Anyway, once we'd calmed down a little we started reflecting a
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We at the (smow)blog aren't above making advertising form others. If we feel that something passes to our remit, we go with it. Crazy as we are. And so it was with great interest that we heard about "Scandinavian Design: Discover form and function" the latest travel guide from Scandline Ferries. We've never actually set foot on a Scandline's ferry ourselves, but the idea of sailing around Denmark and Sweden while learning a little more about the design tradition and future perspectives in
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The (smow) blog has more than once suggested that designer furniture is more than just a comfortable place to sit of an evening or a convenient ledge on which to place your coffee while reading the paper; and that a well constructed piece of quality designer furniture can be a real investment. Proof of this theory, if it were needed, can currently be found at the TEFAF Maastricht - one of the world largest and most important art and antique fairs. For the first time in its 34 year history the
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Ray and Charles Eames could happily be described as „multi-talents“. The American designer pair created functional furniture with a global appeal, shot avant-gard films, designed childrens toys and were responsible for the Eames House and Entenza House in Los Angeles. Charles Eames (1907-1978) studied architecture at the Washington University in St.Louis before a scholarship and subsequent teaching position at the Cranbook Academy of Art brought him to Michigan where he met the painter, and
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Design awards. They’re funny things. Sometimes one has the feeling that behind every tree and round every corner a design award is lurking. And while you can have too much of a good thing, awards ceremonies are in principle positive in that they help present a platform to a lot of designers whose work would otherwise go unnoticed outwith specialist circles One of the oldest and most prestigious design awards is the Good Design Award presented by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of
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