Back in the hazy mists of 2014 the Grassi Museum for Applied Arts, Leipzig presented Sitting – Lying – Swinging. Furniture from Thonet, an exhibition which provided a leisurely stroll through 150 years of Thonet chair design and helped explain the evolution of the company's designs over the decades, including why Thonet lost their way in the 1980s and how from the late 1990s onwards they regained their position as one of Europe's leading contemporary furniture producers. And an exhibition
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If you're of a certain age, and of a certain background, you'll be familiar with the Roland TR-808 drum machine. If not, introduced in 1980 the Roland TR-808 was one of the first programmable drum machines, was, as such, a major influence on the development of electronic music in the 1980s..... and is infamous for sounding absolutely nothing like real drums, far less real percussion. Consequently, on account of its universally acknowledged auditory failings, the TR-808 was only produced for
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As all old thesauruans know "April" is merely a synonym for "Milan" And lo despite all promises to the contrary April 2014 once again found us in Lombardy, where, amongst other objects and exhibitions, we were very taken with the Alexander Girard reissues revealed by Vitra, the exhibition of Meisenthal Glassworks at the Institut Francais and the new Rival chair by Konstantin Grcic for Artek. Away from Milan April 214 saw us get to know the work of Pascal Howe at the DMY Design Gallery Berlin,
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According to our pictorial review of March 2013 it was "a month of travelling: Stuttgart, Chemnitz, Weimar, Dessau….. its amazing we found time to actually write anything……." March was 2014 was the same. Just replace "Stuttgart, Chemnitz, Weimar, Dessau" with "Frankfurt, Münsingen, Berlin, Weil am Rhein" It also explains the large number of half-finished drafts from March. Obviously we didn't find time to write everything!
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For just about as long as Thonet have been producing furniture one of the company's most important designers has been "Thonet Design Team", a description we've always considered to be a rather disparagingly sterile and unnecessarily nebulous description for Thonet's team of in-house designers. Every serious contemporary furniture manufacturer has an in-house design team who are responsible for both helping adapt external designers works to the company's production patterns and also creating
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"When", we asked in context of the Grassi Leipzig exhibition Sitting – Lying – Swinging. Furniture from Thonet, "does an exhibition about Thonet chairs become a sales promotion for Thonet chairs?" In the case of the Grassi exhibition, we concluded, it doesn't. When however does a blog post about a Thonet exhibition becomes an advertisement for Thonet chairs. Round about now. For by way of celebrating the Sitting – Lying – Swinging, an exhibition on "home turf" as it were, (smow) have teamed
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By way of a 1st of May, International Workers' Day, special...... in Milan Ronan Bouroullec told us that the brother's new chair Uncino for Italian produce Mattiazzi was inspired by and loosely based on the very first wooden office chairs. An excellent example of what he meant can currently be enjoyed at the exhibition Sitting – Lying – Swinging. Furniture from Thonet at the Grassi Museum for Applied Arts, Leipzig. A comparison: Uncino by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec for Mattiazzi vs. an 1875
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Standing in the Leipzig Grassi Museum for Applied Arts, surrounded by 150 years of Thonet chair history, Peter Thonet, x-times-great grandson of company founder Michael Thonet and until his recent retirement company CEO, is clearly a very satisfied man, "It makes one proud to be able to look back on a collection of objects that have not only been important for the company, but which have also, occasionally, written design history" Few visiting the new Grassi Museum exhibition "Sitting – Lying
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April 2014, as every April we can ever remember, means Milanese purgatory. Apparently it is meant to cleanse the soul, purify our thoughts and generally mitigate for the sins of the past, and so allow us to proceed to higher plains and greater virtues. And boy must we have sinned. We can't remember exactly when, far less how. We just hope we enjoyed it at the time. Because now we are paying. When, if, we return these are the new design exhibitions we're planning on visiting to help us
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If we were to be completely honest we would have to admit that although we were aware of the name "Ferdinand Kramer", it wasn't until Frankfurt based manufacturer e15 launched a series of Kramer re-editions at Milan 2012 that we actually paid any serious attention to the man and his work. Something we are very thankful for. Born in Frankfurt in 1898 Ferdinand Kramer undertook a foundation architecture course in Munich before joining Bauhaus Weimar in 1919. Disillusioned by the lack of a
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Our coverage of IMM Cologne 2014 may be reaching its conclusion, but we still have a few gleaming gems to bring you, the brightest of which was to be found on the Thonet stand: the new S 1200 desk by Randolf Schott from and with the Thonet Design Team. While classic Thonet desks such as Marcel Breuer's S 285 can work very well in a contemporary home office and/or as an informal place of work in a living room, they do bring with them a certain formal heaviness owing to their abstraction from
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When in our preview of IMM Cologne 2014 we referred to it as marking the opening of the European design circus, we had no idea that it was a circus with a fairground. Sadly the carousel incorporating Zeitraum's Pelle chair seat shells was not there to provide adrenaline rushes. Only visual thrills as part of the 2014 Featured Editions programme. Premièred as a concept at IMM Cologne 2013 and curated by the online portal Stylepark, Featured Editions is a collection of installations in which
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On Monday January 13th the European design circus rolls into the new year with the opening of IMM Cologne 2014 and Passagen 2014, and against our natural inclinations we'll be there, or as Ride so nearly put it; "If we've seen it all before, Why's this train taking us back again? If we don't need anymore, Why's this train taking us back again?" Yes, the rent has to be paid. But there are easier ways to earn a living than spending a week in January on the banks of the Rhein questioning your
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Those still looking for a New Year's Resolution could do worse than to promise to try to maybe visit more design exhibitions this year. And January 2014 offers a few wonderful places to start. That January is once again IMM Cologne and the accompanying Cologne Design Week we make no apologies for having selected two Rhein-side exhibitions, in addition we have an investigation of the production process and a brace of exhibitions devoted to Denmark's more important design "old masters".....
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January 2013 was, as every January, dominated by IMM Cologne, and all that that entails. In particular IMM Cologne 2013 brought us Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec's investiture as A&W Designers of the year and a delightful Alvar Aalto Stool 60 exhibition at Ungers Archiv für Architekturwissenschaft. January 2013 was in addition the opening of the exhibition "Extraordinary Stories About Ordinary Things" at the Design Museum London.....
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One of the biggest challenges facing product designers in coming years will undoubtedly be the question of planned obsolescence. For while we genuinely believe that the majority of designers understand their responsibilities in terms of sustainability and resources, we also know that most designers understand their responsibilities to help their clients generate profit. Finding the correct balance wont be easy. But it must be found. Perhaps the most distressing example of planned
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In 1808 Napoleon had a problem. Or better put, in 1808 Napoleon had a whole continent of problems. Spain, Austria, Finland, England, Russia, Germany, Turkey. Noone it seemed was behaving in a manner that fitted with Napoleon's grand, global plans. How, for example, was he ever to find the time to conquer India if Europe wouldn't just quietly accept French domination? In an attempt to, at least partially, find a way out of the chaos a meeting was organised with Tsar Alexander I of Russia to
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There are only very few furniture manufacturers who can claim to have been major players in two fundamental furniture design revolutions. Thonet is one of them. And if we're honest, the only one we can currently name. Although the Thonet story begins in 1819, the story only really begins to "pick up steam" in 1859 when Michael Thonet perfected his warm wood bending process. The result of over twenty years development, heartbreak, experimentation, bankruptcy, fleeting success and brutal
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As many of you know we officially gave up reporting on private design awards a couple of years ago - for us the emphasis in such awards is more often than not too heavily biased towards generating income for the organisers rather than helping or otherwise furthering the designers and their works. And as such don't merit our support. While some awards are obviously more honourable than others; we decided ignoring all would be fairest. However as Angela Merkel continues to teach us: what is
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As we've said before, and will never tire of repeating, the Thonet back catalogue harbours an unparalleled treasure trove of design classics. And certainly enough interesting and challenging designs to keep half-a-dozen contemporary furniture companies in business for the next decade or two. Fortuitously just as Iceland's fisherman don't try to maximise profit by catching as many fish as possible as quickly as possible, so to do Thonet choose not to raid the archive every couple of months in
read moreAt the risk of upsetting furniture historians, wood is probably the longest serving material in furniture design. It is also one of the most deceptively complex and hard to work materials in furniture design. For all bending, shaping and moulding pieces of solid wood is a process that has long fascinated and infuriated designers and architects in equal measure. From Michael Thonet's ground breaking research in the 19th century, over the efforts of Alvar Aalto, Marcel Breuer or Charles Eames
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This past week it's been hard to escape images of a bentwood bike purporting to have been created by a London based artist for German furniture manufacturer Thonet. We choose not to run the story. Something about it troubled us from the beginning. The fact that only computer generated, rendered, images were available, for example. Plus knowing what we know about Thonet, it just didn't make sense. Didn't feel like Thonet. Wasn't right. And now the confirmation from Frankenberg, it's all a
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Was it not Pulp who in 1995 prophesied that the world would soon be dominated and controlled by mis-shapes, mistakes and misfits: the great silent majority who feel themselves intimidated by their alleged imperfections and deviations from society's norm. If only they could realise that they were so numerous, that they have something to offer and that society's imposed ideas of perfection were our modern golden calf, their future would be so promising..... Under the title "Misfits Revisited"
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Until October 31st 2012 Bauhaus Dessau is showing the exhibition "Marcel Breuer – Design and Architecture" Presenting a wide-ranging look at Breuer's furniture and architectural legacy "Marcel Breuer – Design and Architecture" is a product of the Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein and is curated by the journalist/curator/lecturer Mathias Remmele. At the exhibition opening we caught up with Mathias Remmele for a quick chat about Marcel Breuer, his work and his influences. (smow)blog: From the
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