Much as Gerrit Rietveld's career is publicly reduced down to the Rood-blauwe stoel, so too is it all to easy to imagine Marcel Breuer spent his days doing nothing more than creating chairs and tables from bent steel tubing. Indeed start typing the name "Marcel Breuer" into google and the all-knowing, all-seeing algorithm will only offer you "Marcel Breuer Chair", "Marcel Breuer Wassily Chair" and "Marcel Breuer Biography" as searches. That the public impression of Marcel Breuer should be so
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Until September 16th the Grassi Museum Leipzig is showing the Vitra Design Museum exhibition The Essence of Things: Design and the Art of Reduction. And so keeping with the theme, we'll keep our post reduced and simply link to our post from The Essence of Things: Design and the Art of Reduction at the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein. Paul Weller is famously of the opinion that it's ludicrous to expect him to sing songs today that he wrote as an 18 year old. His world view having,
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In addition to showing "From Aalto to Zumthor Furniture by Architects" the Museum für Angewandte Kunst Köln is also showing off it's new acquisitions: 10 early Michael Thonet stools and a rare work from Jacob and Josef Kohn. Plus 2 monumental pieces of modern abstract metal furniture: "2 R Not" by Ron Arad and "Bell Metal Horse Chair" by Satyendra Pakhalé The Thonet chairs are currently being displayed in a special showcase that wonderfully portrays the development of Michael Thonet's work.
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We've long since accepted that there are more design weeks in a year than actual weeks. But we still can't accept the poor coordination between the various festivals. June, July, August.Basically nothing. September, October. Every day Copenhagen, London, Brussels, Budapest, Istanbul, Vienna, Eindhoven, Leipzig, Lodz, Zürich.... Every 2 years Orgatec in Cologne. And in the midst of all this Berlin sprouts Qubique. Hallo! We however have no choice. Or at least little choice. Our October
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Name: Christoffer Martens Born: Bremen, 1975 Alma mater: Product Design, University of Applied Science, Potsdam Internships: Alfredo Häberli, Zürich Products: Siebenschläfer for Nils Holger Moormann, Aschau im Chiemgau Spross for Nils Holger Moormann, Aschau im Chiemgau Obstrutsche for emform, Bockhorn Buchhalter Potbase (smow)blog: How did you arrive at product design? Christoffer Martens: I initially trained as a graphic designer and then worked in a media agency for a few years.
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If Christmas is a time for family, then Christmas is also surely a time to buy your gifts from a family business. Currently being run by the 5th generation, Thonet have not only been responsible for the introduction and development of bent wood and steel tube furniture - two of the most important genres in the history of furniture design - but continue to support and develop young designers and so may just also discover the next big genre..... Thonet S 333 by Holger Lange Back in February
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For us the Wiener Palais Liechtenstein is a building with almost religious meaning. For it was, in many ways, the place where Michael Thonet got his first big break - and so the point from where the Thonet story starts to turn and to become a success story. Some have Mecca, others Bethlehem - and we have a 17th century garden residence in north Vienna. All of which speaks volumes for the quality of our social lives. For the Vienna Design Week, in contrast, the Liechtenstein Museum is the
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On the last Sunday of the school summer holidays over 35 production companies in and around Kassel stage an annual collective "Open Day" - Blauer Sonntag. The name may be an extremely complex and over ambitious pun - the idea is however much more agreeable and this year we took the opportunity to visit Thonet in Frankenberg(Eder). For not only was Blauer Sonntag the first "official" event for the new Thonet Wohnshowroom, but visitors also had the rare opportunity to observe the Thonet wood
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Ten years ago Berlin/Leipzig based design studio Delphin Design developed the S 360 conference and auditorium chair for Thonet. In 2006 followed the slimmer S 260, which not only featured a folding version but much more importantly could be interlocked with the S 360, thus allowing users the opportunity to expand their seating options without having to replace their complete stock. And now Delphin Design and Thonet have launched the S 160. We presume the S 60 will be available in 2016
read more"The 7000 system was created to offer Thonet a shelf system that you can use for home use or office use" With the launch of the 7000 system by Munich based f/p design Thonet expanded their product pallet to include modular shelving. It's a bit like a burger chain starting to offer salad; theoretically there's no reason why they shouldn't, you just never thought they would. On the occasion of the product launch at the 2010 Milan design week, we spoke to the designers Fritz Frenkler and Anette
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On several occasions in the past month we have repeatedly seen a similar scene. A scene that has made us cry. Lovely houses, truly wonderful, carefully considered constructions in idyllic locations - and then in the garden, furniture that the owners have obviously bought, possibly as an after thought, from their local garden centre. Just looking at some of the chairs made our upper thighs go numb from discomfort. And as for that recliner yesterday in Berlin!!!! People, gardens are there to
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The (smow)blog team outing to the cardboard furniture workshop was coupled with a visit to the current Vitra Design Museum Exhibition: The Essence of Things. Design and the Art of Reduction. We must admit to finding it more than a little ironic that an exhibition on "Design and the Art of Reduction" should be taking place in a building designed by Frank Gehry, especially when Tadao Ando's Conference Pavilion is only some 10m away. And after the long journey to Weil am Rhein this thought
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You know how it is. You arrive early in the office..... Make a coffee..... Turn the computer on........ Check out the tabloid press websites..... And break gently into the day with stories as irrelevant and vacuous as they are compelling. It's just a comfortable and familiar way to start the day. This morning was different. The story had all the makings of normal tabloid nonsense: a pop star, a footballer's wife and a party guest list that you suspect had been thrown together by a tired and
read moreFor 26 years James Irvine has been quietly and unassumingly influencing European industrial design. Immediately after graduating from the London Royal College of Art in 1984 James Irvine moved to Milan to take up a position with the Olivetti design studio. And has pretty much been in the north Italian metropolis ever since. In 1992 James Irvine left Olivetti and since then has worked with companies as varied as Artemide, B&B Italia, Whirlpool, Magis and WMF. Among his most public projects is
read moreLast week we vented our spleen on the ridiculous hotel prices in Milan during design week. And against an international design industry that blindly accepts such as part of the annual fun. We owe James Irvine an apology. James Irvine is obviously a man of principle who is prepared to raise his voice against the Milan hotel industry. And so thank you James Irvine! Hopefully the rest of the furniture industry will follow your lead and in a couple of years we can all tweet #Bologna2012 or
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On Saturday 20.03.2010 the latest Vitra Design Museum exhibition "The Essence of Things. Design and the Art of Reduction" officially opens. An exhibition very much after our own hearts. "The Essence of Things. Design and the Art of Reduction" explores the logic that "it is in the nature of human beings to seek the simplest solution" Although admittedly this is a logic that - despite its logic - all too many designers somehow manage to ignore, there are thankfully enough examples of good,
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There are people here at (smow)HQ who believe this story is nothing more than PR gag. But they are the same people who don't believe that we have Eames Elephants to help with deliveries. Fools. At the Geneva International Motor Show Thonet, in conjunction with HEICO Sportiv and Volvo today launched a new gear shift knob. Created exclusively for the new Volvo C70 by HEICO Sportiv and the new Volvo S60, the Thonet gear shift lever is crafted from oak, beech or walnut - possibly also a metal
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9th February 2010, Brussels Under the motto "Think before you Post" the from the EU funded Safer Internet Day 2010 is focused primarily on how one deals with privacy in the internet, especially as concerns young people, photos, social networking sites and chatrooms. Which is naturally a positive thing. In essence one of the core reasons that people for all kids, run into problems on the internet is because they blindly believe everything they read. Previously "the camera never lied", we
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To celebrate their 50th birthday the German furnishings magazine "Schöner Wohnen" have produced a small book entitled "Das Buch der Klassiker“ ("The book of classics") in which the magazine present their 400 furniture and accessory classics. And an exhibition of the selected items forms the basis of the Schöner Wohnen stand here in Cologne. Aside from familiar faces such as Vegetal by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec from Vitra or the Castore lamp by Huub Ubbens und Michele De Lucchi for
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Twas the month before Christmas, when all through the house Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. Save for a company from South Tirol, In hopes that unwary Christmas shoppers would buy their illegal unlicensed copies of Bauhaus classics In a lesser known version of his 1822 classic “A Visit from St. Nicholas", Clement Clarke Moore eerily predicted events some 180 years later whereby, as part of a Christmas sales promotion, a "known" producer of unlicensed copies of Bauhaus classics
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In the past week three independent events have occurred which fuse together in one important tale. Firstly, while visiting a student flat in Dresden the (smow)boss noticed an obviously well used, but functioning chair reminiscent of the EA 107 by Charles and Ray Eames for Vitra. Despite assuming it to be a copy - student flat, Dresden, etc... - his professional curiosity got the better of him and thought he'd better check .. and Lo and Behold it was an original EA 107 by Charles and Ray
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In the next week or so we will be introducing here some of the new products from Thonet that are now available at smow.com. But before we get that far, a small video below that explains something of the story of Thonet furniture and the production process involved in bent wood and bent metal furniture. Narrated by perennial smow favourite Nils Holger Moormann. The text is currently only in German - we are however working on a translation - and so until then sit back and enjoy the pictures.
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We're just a touch late with this one, but since July 22nd the Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin has been showing the exhibition "Bauhaus. A Conceptual Model". For the first time, the three German Bauhaus institutions - Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin, Museum für Gestaltung, Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau and Klassik Stiftung Weimar - are uniting to present a comprehensive Bauhaus retrospective. “Bauhaus. A Conceptual Model” recounts the story of the Bauhaus in a comprehensive presentation of the works of its
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Although the rumour persists that we only travel to trade fairs and exhibitions so that we can impress people in bars with phrases such as "Last week in New York..." or "For me the real beauty of Milan is...", in truth we do do a little work. And the fruits of that work can be seen, for example, in the ever expanding (smow)collection. And punctually to the start of The Ashes season we can now offer the extended Thonet outdoor range; quite possibly the most stylish furniture for sitting in the
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