IMM Cologne kept us busy into February, but the month also saw the opening of an Eileen Gray retrospective in Paris, a visit to the Louis Kahn exhibition at the Vitra Design Museum and the sad passing of James Irvine....
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Older readers will be aware that we have often held up the absence of some of Germany's most important designer furniture manufacturers as an unmissable indicator of an inherent weakness in the IMM Cologne brand. Those same readers will therefore understand the confusion we felt on seeing that Wilde+Spieth would, finally, be attending IMM Cologne in 2013. We were delighted they were participating. We however now have one argument less. Based in Esslingen near Stuttgart, Wilde+Spieth were
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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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When we were still young, fit and healthy, towns and cities existed. Just existed. These days in order to exist a city needs to be the city of something. And so as one drives along a German motorway, every ten metres or so comes a large brown sign announcing the next conurbation as "Chemnitz - City of the Modernity", "Pied Piper City Hameln" or "Prien am Chiemsee - City of the criminally lazy taxi drivers". Not wanting to be the outsider in this age of claims making, Weil am Rhein has
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