When is an ironing board, not an ironing board? When it's Cinderella by Anna Kraitz for Design House Stockholm. Cinderella by Anna Kraitz for Design House Stockholm, as seen during Stockholm Design Week 2023 In our (brief) introductory post to Stockholm Furniture Fair 2023 we said we didn't visit any of the myriad flagship store presentations staged during Stockholm Design Week 2023. Turns out that was wrong. Turns out we did. Turns out we visited the in-store presentation in Design
read more
Amsterdam based manufacturer Lentala, a.k.a. Design Academy Eindhoven graduate Boris Lancelot, is, if one so will, a commercial expression of a research and experimentation begun in Eindhoven in context of Lancelot's 2018 graduation thesis Techno Motion, and continued post-Eindhoven in the project Active Classroom undertaken by Lancelot in conjunction with movement science researchers at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and UMCG, University of Groningen. Research and experimentation which,
read more
As noted in our (brief) introductory post from Stockholm 2023, alongside all the problematic aspects of furniture fairs, one of the advantages, one of the joys of the format, is the chance to catch up with folks, the opportunity they offer to meet with, if oft all too briefly, individuals whose paths you don't cross on a regular basis; individuals such as Budapest based András Kerékgyártó, a designer who we greatly enjoy talking to, or more accurately who we greatly enjoy listening too,
read more
Launched in 2022 by Gothenburg based lighting manufacturer Oblure, Stair Lamp by, similarly Gothenburg based, Notchi Architects, is a freely dimmable desk/table/bedside lamp-cum-bookend which features two integrated USB-C ports on the side, an integrated two-pin plug socket unobtrusively, neatly, hidden within the base, exterior storage space for pens, USB sticks, chewing gum, lip balm, rings, loose change, very small cacti, etc, etc, etc..... and which screams 1980s Postmodernism at you.
read more
Based in Tauberbischofsheim in the extreme north of Baden-Württemberg, Germany, VS Vereinigte Spezialmöbelfabriken have producing furniture for schools for over 120 years — the "S" in "VS" was for the greater part of that 120+years Schulmöbelfabriken, school furniture works — and while you can definitely see Stakki in educational establishments, not least thanks to the child sized versions on show in Stockholm, and which, one presumes are known in Tauberbischofsheim as Stakkli, or as
read more
The high-backed settle has been a furniture object since at least the Middle Ages, if not earlier, and has be re-interpreted numerous times over the centuries; including in the early 2000s by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec who, as far as we recall, introduced with their Alcove for Vitra the concept of the upholstered high-backed settle. A novel understanding of the high-backed settle that very quickly became a popular subject for manufacturers of acoustic furniture, and more gradually a subject
read more
Born in Tokushima, Japan, in 1920 as a scion of long line of Kendō equipment manufacturers, in the course of the 1950s Takeshi Nii increasingly became a handcraft practitioner, primarily in wood, and subsequently moving to furniture, for all chairs, a fascination with chairs that, as best we can ascertain, and if our Japanese is as good as we hope it is, was inflamed by post-War Danish chair design, and for all by Peter Hvidt and Orla Mølgaard-Nielsen's 1950 AX chair for Fritz Hansen; and
read more
Hej! Hej! Hej! Hej! Hej! Hej! The rhythm of Stockholm Furniture Fair is given as much by the greetings ringing through the venue as by the layout of the halls or by the products on show; wherever one goes the background to everything is the sound of a simple, but potent, galvanising, word, concept, conveyed and returned....... 🧑 Hej! Hej! 👩🏾 👵🏽 Hej! Hej! 😀 🧔🏼 Hej! Hej! 🤝🏾 But it's been a while since we were last exposed to the joyous rhythm of Stockholm Furniture Fair. Or indeed to
read more
As any fule kno Italy has a long (hi)story in and of architecture, whereby it is predominately a (his)story of architecture: with Buone Nuove. Women Changing Architecture the Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Stockholm, offer an introduction to an alternative narrative. And to alternative futures....... Buone Nuove. Women Changing Architecture, Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Stoccolma Originally presented as a full exhibtion at MAXXI Rome in 2022, and now freshly pared down to an abbreviated
read more
According to Germanic folklore: A wet February brings a fruitful year. And that, we'd argue, not only in terms of vegetation, but also in terms of your individual personal development: a wet February meaning more time spent in museums and thus an enhanced opportunity to engage in meaningful and relevant and motivating discourses and discussions. An ideal environment in which to allow your appreciations of and positions to the world around you to optimally develop, swell, ripen and nourish. So
read more
As here in the northern hemisphere winter cedes to spring, not only is nature once again reawakening from its long repose but so too is the international museum community; and that, one senses, with more vigour than in the most recent springs where the Covid pandemic induced upsetting of the established order of the museal ecosystem, through both enforced closures and fundamental disruptions of essential exhibition development processes, dimmed somewhat the promise of the annual spring blush.
read more
According to the Roman scholar Marcus Terentius Varro February 7th marks the first day of spring. Which strikes us, as we're sure it does you, as a little early; however, there was reason in Varro's bold claim, for Varro further sets February 7th as the start of the year, and for all links February 7th with the rising of the west wind, a favourable, warming wind, whose arrival indicates the need to start cultivating your land and crops, specifically Varro advises, "these are things which
read more
In days of yore October was known in Germanic lands as Weinmonat, Wine Month, Month of Wine, whereby thoughts were, unquestionably, less with the drink as with the grape and the harvest, and thus the promise of the new wine. And in many regards our exhibition recommendations can be considered a monthly harvest of the new crop of architecture and design exhibitions; specifically, and staying in Germanic registers, an Auslese, a considered selection of those well ripened concepts and premises it
read more
According to Germanic folklore Mairegen bringt Segen, Rain in May brings blessings. It also brings an excellent excuse to visit an architecture and/or design exhibition. Our five recommended shelters from the showers in May 2021 can be found in Ulm, Stockholm, Baruth, Zürich and Hasselt...... "HfG Ulm: Exhibition Fever" at the HfG-Archiv, Ulm, Germany. Although only existent between 1953 and 1968 the Hochschule für Gestaltung, HfG, Ulm has a near mythical place in the (hi)story of post-War
read more
It's not just the presence, or lack of, female designers in the contemporary furniture industry, nor just the presence, or lack of, female designers in museum exhibitions that informs and influences understandings of the contribution of female designers to contemporary furniture design and the (hi)story of furniture design, it is also the presence, or lack of, female designers in design museum and applied arts museum collections, those depositories and reserves of furniture design's history and
read more
With the 2020 edition Stockholm Furniture Fair celebrates its 70th birthday. Grattis på födelsedagen! We did think about taking along a cake, but knew the halls of Stockholmsmässan would be filled to the rafters with Kanelbullar, as indeed would we. And so by way of a present, a Stockholm Furniture Fair 2020 High 6!! EIO Lounge Chair from Nuen The first thing to say is that we feel that, for us, EIO is but the start of a journey. The second thing to say is that ahead of any trade fair one
read more
While it is important, and relevant, that the centenary of the opening of Bauhaus Weimar is used to delve a little deeper into the (hi)story of both the institution and inter-War Modernism, design and architecture is more than Bauhaus. Thus following on from our October Bauhaus/inter-War Modernism focussed new exhibition recommendations, five more general, if anything but humdrum, architecture and design exhibitions opening in October 2019 in Groningen, Frankfurt, New York, Stockholm and Weil
read more
The Chinese government warning pro-democracy demonstrators to end their street protests. Central Americans risking their lives, and dodging border guards and fences, to cross into America in search of the, much vaunted, American Dream. A dogmatic right wing English Conservative government showing their contempt for the people of Scotland. Thankfully, the world has moved on since 1989...... Postmodern furniture and the Brandenburg Gate, as seen at 1989 - Culture and Politics, The National
read more
Whereas in the natural world spring ushers in new life but once a year, in the design museum world re-awakenings are biannual: a spring spring as curators awake from their winter hibernation and an autumn spring as they awake from their summer dormancy. Both bringing forth not only the promise of growth, energy, of a new esprit, of new experiences, new sensations, but confirming the eternal nature of existence, that we are but a moment on an endless spiralling continuum....... Our five new
read more
For the fifth year in succession ArkDes, Sweden’s national centre for architecture and design, is hosting the Ung Svensk Form/Young Swedish Design award/platform exhibition: a showcase of 25 projects providing for 25 understandings of contemporary design in/from Sweden. Ung Svensk Form/Young Swedish Design 2019 Exhibition, ArkDes Stockholm As noted in our post from Ung Svensk Form/Young Swedish Design 2018, inaugurated in 1998 by Svensk Form (the Swedish Society of Crafts and Design) and
read more
No, it's not all shoulder pads and garish colour clashes....... although........ .......much more, with the exhibition 1980s - A new era in furniture design Stockholm's Museum of Furniture Studies explore furniture design in that most politically, culturally, socially and economically fluid of decades, and, and not completely unrelated, a decade which not only brought fundamental changes to understandings of furniture design, but arguably brought more abrupt, more curt, more enduring changes
read more
As regular readers will be aware, in these dispatches we, very, very occasionally, quietly bemoan a certain monotony at furniture trade fairs, protest that, if you will, we regularly find ourselves wading through an homogenous mass. On this occasion we will however let someone else make that observation on our behalf. In his 2015 book Swedish Design: An Ethnography the American anthropologist Keith M. Murphy notes of a visit to the 2006 Stockholm Furniture Fair, "[T]he only problem was, so
read more
It's been 8 years since we last visited an exhibition by Stockholm based studio Färg & Blanche. Then 2011, back in the days when we still had our own teeth, our own hair, dreams and aspirations which were in our control, it was the exhibition 20 designers at BIOLOGISKA, one of the most memorable locations we've ever viewed an exhibition in. And despite having been in many an impressive venues since, a multi-storey 360 degree diorama populated by stuffed animals in a range of habitats, remains
read more
While others spend their summers' holidaying with families, barbecuing with friends or pretending to read novels on the balcony, at the beach and/or in the local park, we travel Europe visiting design school summer exhibitions and subsisting exclusively from falafel. It's a curious, idiosyncratic, slightly tragic, way to spend your life, but it's the one we've chosen, is in many regards the only road we've ever known. And so, as May's warmth ceded to the heat of June, we made like
read more
