Vitra’s Massive New Book Is a Treasure Trove of Furniture Design History
Twenty years in the making, Vitra Design Museum’s Atlas of Furniture Design is a comprehensive encyclopedia comprising hundreds of sketches, photographs, portraits, and ephemera from the past 200-plus years of furniture design. The in-depth overview dives into the ouvres of design legends—including Charlotte Perriand, Eero Saarinen, Hella Jongerius, and Finn Juhl, to name a few—while situating their work with sociocultural and design-historical essays.
The Atlas of Furniture Design is a comprehensive volume spanning a multitude of objects, essays, designers, and contributors.
"The Atlas of Furniture Design is a treasure trove that offers not only definitive information about beloved staples of design history, but also new, fresh, and often unexpected perspectives—all presented in a generous format that captures the breadth and depth of this important subject," says Paola Antonelli, senior curator of architecture and design at The Museum of Modern Art.
Read on for a sample of what’s on offer, and pre-order your copy via the link below.
At over 1,000 pages, the atlas is a treasure trove of furniture design history.
The Eameses adapted manufacturing techniques developed during World War II to mass-produce their Molded Plastic Armchair. The couple sought to express materials honestly and unselfconsciously—these were the first one-piece plastic chairs offered without upholstery or covering.
The Dutch architect and cabinetmaker Gerrit Rietveld designed the precursor to his famous Red Blue Chair in 1918/1919. He submitted the unpainted model to an exhibition at the Museum for Applied Arts in Haarlem, which included a competition for the best design for a simple lounge chair that could be manufactured for less than 35 guilders—roughly $20. The resulting design is an open spatial composition, corresponding to the principles of the De Stijl movement, of which Rietveld was a member. "The construction helps to interconnect the components without mutilating them or allowing one to dominate the other, with the resulting effect that the whole stands free and clear within the space and the form is further emphasized by the material," he says.
Frank Lloyd Wright designed Johnson Wax’s Administration Building in the 1930s, and with it the furnishings—including this armchair set on casters.
The Barcelona chair was designed by Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich for the German Pavilion at the International Exposition of 1929 in Barcelona, Spain. The frame was initially designed to be bolted together, but it was redesigned in 1950 using a seamless piece of stainless steel for a smoother appearance. The ivory-colored pigskin used for the original pieces was eventually replaced with bovine leather.
Charlotte Perriand was a trailblazer in an era when even the progressive Bauhaus school barred women from furniture design courses. Shortly after garnering acclaim at the 1925 Expo des Arts Décoratifs at age 22, she joined the Paris design studio of Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret where they collaborated on "equipment for living." Post World War II, Perriand joined forces with Jean Prouvé to create modernist furniture like the Tunisie bookcase. The piece was made from oak, pine, mahogany, painted diamond-point aluminum, and painted metal, and it was manufactured by Prouvé’s studio in 1952.
Designer and engineer Jean Prouvé developed the EM Table around 1950 for Maison Tropicale, an early prefabricated home. The table adheres to the aesthetics of necessity, and even its smallest details are determined by its construction. The canted legs are connected by a crossbar, illustrating the structural forces and flow of stresses in a way that is typically seen only in engineered structures.
Eero Aarnio’s 1963 Ball Chair experimented with plastic—a material that allowed makers of the era to explore new colors, forms, and production methods.
A timeline of Austrian furniture maker Thonet gives historical context to the company’s innovative wood-bending processes, which were patented before World War I.
Pages of significant design objects are accompanied by details like materials, production years, and dimensions.
Essays by more than 70 contributing authors provide insight and historical context for modern furniture design.
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