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Miniatures 3-Benet Skalstol

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Hans J. Wegner is widely considered to be one of the major innovators of traditional furniture making and the father of Danish Modernism. At the time when he created his 3-Benet Skalstol design, the two-dimensional forming of laminated wood and plywood was no longer a novelty. However, in order to stabilize the legs, in this model Wegner refined the existing technology by dividing the frame of glued laminated wood at the joints in the legs into two separate strands, the angles of which held each other in check. In terms of design and colour, he was strongly influenced here by Japanese tradition. This model only ever existed as a prototype, both with and without upholstery.

Miniatures Tulip Chair

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The Tulip Chair is one of a series of chairs, stools, and tables developed by Eero Saarinen within a five-year period. The characteristic feature of the series is that the supporting structure has been pared to a central supporting stem »like a wineglass« in order to emphasise the uniformity of table and chair. Eero Saarinen describes the Tulip Chair: »The bases of tables and chairs in a typical furniture arrangement create an ugly, confusing, and restless world. I wanted to design a chair as an integrated whole once again. All important furniture of the past always had a holistic structure, from King Tut's chair to that of Thomas Chippendale. Today, we are parting ways with this holism with our predilection for plastic and laminated wood shells. I am looking forward to the point when the plastics industry will be capable of manufacturing the chair using just one material, the way I have designed it.«

Miniatures Wiggle Side Chair

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As early as the 1960s, cardboard furniture emerged as a cheap and light alternative to traditional furniture. At that time, slotting and folding as well as supports were used to ensure that the cardboard could bear sufficient weight. Nevertheless, cardboard furniture hardly had a chance against plastic furniture, which was equally light. Frank O. Gehry discovered a process which enabled cardboard furniture to be made in massive blocks – cardboard sculptures, as it were. »One day I saw a stack of corrugated cardboard in my office; it was the material I used to build my architectural models. And I started playing around with it, gluing it together and then cutting it into shape with a handsaw and a pocket-knife«. Gehry called the material made of corrugated cardboard glued in layers that ran at right angles to each other »Edge Board«. In 1972 he brought out a series of extraordinarily stable cardboard furniture called »Easy Edges«.

Miniatures RAR

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The Fiberglass Chairs are rare examples of a satisfying synthesis of formal and technical innovation. For the first time in the history of design, Charles and Ray Eames utilized the unlimited malleability of plastic for the development of a comfortable seating shell that corresponds to the shape of the human body. The idea of making a three-dimensional molded shell goes back to a design from 1940. The original attempt to make the shell out of plywood was unsuccessful, however, due to the extreme conditions necessary to mold the material. Only with the advent of fiberglass technology was it possible to achieve satisfying results. The first Fiberglass Chair went into production in 1950. After years of experimentation, Charles and Ray Eames were able to realize their goal: an industrially produced chair that is inexpensive, sturdy, and comfortable. The Fiberglass Chairs come in several versions: with an A-shaped shell (armchair) or S-shaped shell (side chair) and on different bases, one of which is the famous »Eiffel Tower« base. Until 1968, Herman Miller also produced a rocking chair base. Every Herman Miller employee who expected a baby received it as a gift until 1984.

Miniatures MR 90 Barcelona

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Mies van der Rohe designed the German pavilion and corresponding furniture for the 1929 world's fair in Barcelona. Among other things, his pavilion served as the setting for the inaugural ceremony led by the Spanish royal couple, Alfonso XIII and Victoria Eugenia. While Mies van der Rohe implemented his ideas of avant garde steel and glass architecture for the building design, he drew his inspiration for the furniture from historic models. Mies van der Rohe took as his starting point the ancient, scissors-shaped collapsible folding chair, already a symbol of power among Egyptian rulers. In keeping with the occasion, he adopted the representative qualities of the scissors chair, although he does without the folding function and interprets it afresh. In order to match the overall impression of luxury in the pavilion, Mies van der Rohe chose not to use wood like the historic models, but instead employed chrome-plated steel strip and leather upholstery with button stitching. The pavilion was torn down after the fair. However, along with the furniture, it was retrospectively acknowledged as a showcase for the »International Style« that had taken hold throughout the world. The Barcelona pavilion was reconstructed and rebuilt in 1986.

Miniatures Karuselli

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The idea of creating a glassfibre chair based on humanbody's shape was planned already in late 1950s. Glassfibre, the new material, was just invented and came to Finland in late 50s but was very expensive to use. Kukkapuro realized the first model in 1958–1959 and in early 1960s when glassfibre became cheaper Kukkapuro continued the development of Karuselli which finally was produced by the Finnish furniture company Haimi Oy in 1964. The chair was designed to provide a relaxing sitting position as possible. The basic shape has been obtained through the use of flexible steel mesh and conforms with the human anatomy. The swiveling seat which was of fibreglass reinforced polyester was connected to the base by an intermediate steel spring and rubber dampers. The seat shell and base were coated with semigloss plastic paint in the colours white and black. For upholstery only leather was used.

Miniatures Lounge Chair & Ottoman

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The Lounge Chair is one of the best known creations of Charles and Ray Eames. Created in 1956, it has become a classic in modern furniture history. The miniature version in is a coveted accessory and collectible – reproduced in exact detail with outstanding craftsmanship.

Miniatures Big Easy

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Produced and distributed by Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein/Germany after an original model by One Off Ltd., London. With the kind permission of Ron Arad, London. All rights reserved. In 1988 and 1989, Arad's London »One Off« work shop created an entire series of »Big Easy« armchairs using bent sheet steel welded at the edges. The »Big Easys« were brought out as individual items or small limited series; they all had a striking basic form and inflated arms reminiscent of comics – but they differed in terms of the welding and color. In the course of time, the initially oarse, roughly welded »Big Easys« went through changes, first becoming colorful lacquered chairs with smooth surfaces and then elegant versions made of polished stainless steel. Although Ron Arad's furniture are variants on everyday things, they seem strange and irritate the eye – not only owing to the choice of material. Formally and functionally speaking, they undermine customary assumptions. You feel you have to first learn how to use them. A »Big Easy's« voluminous steel body of the »Big Easy« resembles a traditional upholstered club armchair but can hardly be associated with a sense of comfortable interiors. Ron Arad considered it an art object that could likewise be functional, but was not intended to be particularly practical.

Miniatures Collection - La Chaise

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The Miniatures Collection of the Vitra Design Museum presents the most important classics of modern furniture history on a 1:6 scale and replicates the historic originals down to the smallest detail.

Miniatures B3 Wassily

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Marcel Breuer was one of the most important designers of the early modern age. His biography is closely linked to the history of the Bauhaus, founded by Walter Gropius in 1919. The club chair B3, known today as »Wassily« was also created in connection with this renowned institution. lt is the first piece of seating furniture in the history of design to be made from seamless, precision-drawn tubular steel. lts transparency and visible structure are expressions of the stringent aesthetic approach that prevailed in architecture and design following World War I. Marcel Breuer replaced the massive upholstered corpus of the traditional club chair with a skeletonlike construction made out of bent steel tubing, thereby overcoming the physical weightiness of conventional seating. He exploited the elasticity of the material, complementing it with tautly stretched fabric strips of reinforced canvas for the seat and back. The B3 did not acquire the name »Wassily« until the beginning of the sixties, when the Italian furniture producer Dino Gavina purchased the manufacturing rights: Marcel Breuer had designed the armchair for the house of the painter Wassily Kandinsky, who taught at the Bauhaus from 1922 until 1933.

Miniatures Diamond Chair

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Harry Bertoia, who came from Italy, originally dedicated himself to sculpting. He created a series of chairs and seats using techniques he was familiar with from gold work and sculpting with iron wire. Until 1953 he developed these ideas together with specialists from the Knoll company until they were ready for mass production. The structure of the »Diamond Chair« clearly separates the different functions of the chair: the transparent wire shell is bent out of a quadratic lattice into an organically shaped diamond like a net frozen in space, and the base of round iron embraces it like a polished diamond. Bertoia considered his furniture to resemble his sculptures and explained: »In chairs many functional problems have to be solved first, but basically chairs are also studies in space, form and metal. On close inspection it becomes clear that they are mostly made up of air. Space flows right through them.«

Akari 33N

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The Akari Light Sculptures (1951) by Isamu Noguchi are a series of luminaires, handcrafted from traditional washi paper by Japanese artisans. ‘The harshness of electricity is thus transformed through the magic of paper back to the light of our origin – the sun.’ (Noguchi)

Desk Clocks - Diamond Clock

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The many accessories created for the home by George Nelson include a variety of table clocks. Representing a selection of these classic designs, the Desk Clocks offer a refreshing alternative to conventional clocks. Equipped with high-quality quartz movements, the charm of these decorative timepieces is equalled by their precision.

Miniatures Aluminium Chair

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The furniture making up the indoor-outdoor group goes back to an idea by Alexander Girard and Eero Saarinen, who were looking for furnishings to harmonize with the house they had just completed for Irvin Miller. Girard, one of whose interests as an architect was landscape gardening, complained that though there was a good choice of furniture for interiors, there was nothing to grace attractive patios – and no decent garden furniture. Charles Eames became preoccupied with this problem until one day during a flight he came up with the idea of an aluminium frame construction combined with a material »seat«. He wanted to develop a shape following the natural lines of the body, not however as a hard shell, but as a resilient length of material stretched between two supports which trace the body's natural form. A narrow plastic strip extending the length of the material acts as reinforcement. The material is held in place by insertion into slits on the frame's outer edge. Experiments with different covering materials later resulted in an upholstered sandwich construction consisting of two layers of »Nauga hide« with a thin filling of vinyl-foam and vinylwadding stitched at intervals of 1 7/8 inches using a high-frequency welding technique. Originally conceived for outside use, the first aluminium easy chairs to be mass produced, are today used solely in interiors.

Miniatures Womb Chair & Ottoman

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The Womb Chair is regarded as one of the icons of postwar American Modernism. Designed by Eero Saarinen in 1946 and manufactured by Knoll International since 1948 (originally as Model No. 70), this armchair is the first piece of mass produced furniture in the history of design with an integrated seat shell made of fibre reinforced plastic. The expansive foam upholstered shell, which has two inset cushions for added comfort, is supported by a bent tubular steel frame. Saarinen developed the Womb Chair in close collaboration with a boat builder. His stated intention was to design a chair that would allow a variety of sitting positions and create a special feeling of relaxation and cosiness. This central design concept finds vivid expression in its name.

Slow Chair & Ottoman

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The translucent sling cover of Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec’s Slow Chair (2006) replaces the thick cushions of traditional armchairs, resulting in a generously proportioned armchair that is both lightweight and comfortable.

Physix Conference

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Physix Conference provides dynamic seating and lasting comfort, even without the mechanical adjustment options of the Physix office chair, thanks to its flexible seat frame and elastic textile cover in knit or woven fabric. The chair is an excellent choice for conference and meeting areas in which understated elegance is the key image.

Softshell Side Chair

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The Softshell Side Chair, whose gentle contours are defined by its soft upholstery, provides exceptionally comfortable seating and compact dimensions: vertical ribs concealed in the upper part of the backrest offer flexibility and considerable freedom of movement – and exceptional comfort even over prolonged periods of sitting. The Softshell Side Chair has a four-legged base made of robust plastic that accentuates the understated elegance of the design. Similar in appearance, the Softshell Side Chair and Softshell Chair can be perfectly combined at the same table. Both chairs are available in the same selection of versatile fabric or leather covers in a wide choice of colours.

Unix Chair, cantilever

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The practical, robust Unix Chair by Antonio Citterio is the ultimate all-rounder. The cantilever chair flexes comfortably under the user and is ideal for for visitor and conference settings.

Miniatures LCM

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Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen designed a chair in 1940 with a new type of three-dimensional preshaped plywood seat for a competition held by the New York Museum of Modern Art. The chair did not go into production owing to a lack of technical know-how. It was very rare back then for plywood to be successfully pressed into a three-dimensional shape. In the years that followed, Charles and Ray Eames concentrated on developing a process that enabled plywood to be shaped as they wanted. The »Plywood Chairs« DCW (Dining Chair Wood), LCW (Lounge Chair Wood) and the versions with metal legs, namely DCM (Dining Chair Metal) and LCM were the result of these years of experimentation. In 1945 Charles and Ray Eames again took up the idea of a seat made of formed plywood without, however, coming up with satisfactory solutions. As a consequence, they rejected the idea of a multifunctional seat and decided to treat seat and back as separate, freely articulated elements that were linked with each other via a backbone – the frame. Each component is therefore reduced to a clearly defined function which it fulfills with a minimum of materials being used. The rubber »shock mounts« glued onto the wood enable the seat and back to be connected to the frame.

Miniatures Marshmallow Sofa

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George Nelson is one of the most influential personalities in U.S. design after 1945. As of 1946 he was for many years head of the Design Department at the Herman Miller company, on whose behalf he engaged designers hardly known at the time, such as Charles Eames , Isamu Noguchi, and Alexander Girard. And he was also inspired by other areas of culture: along with his work as an architect, he concerned himself with ongoing sociological and artistic themes. Nelson's ”Marshmallow”-sofa must be considered one of the earliest "Pop Art" furniture designs: the transformation of a traditional sofa into a threedimensional structure made of soft, colored cushioning. The seat and back are supported by a steel construction and the unit has the shape of an axially symmetrical folded-out waffle.

Miniatures Panton Chairs (Set of 5)

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Inspired by Pop Art and Pop Culture, 1960 furniture design broke with the purism of modern functionalism. The use of new materials liberated furniture from the constraints of traditional structures and made it possible for designers to play imaginatively with form and color. At international furniture exhibitions, designers like Verner Panton presented futuristic-looking interior landscapes to go with a free and easy, hedonistic lifestyle. Verner Panton wrote of his works: »I try to forget existing examples, even if they are well made, and find my own way of coming to terms with the materials. The result seldom has four legs, not because I do not want to make a chair but because working with new materials like wire mesh and polyester demands new forms.« The Panton Chair is regarded today as one of the classics of modern furniture design. It was the first chair in design history to have no back legs and be moulded in one piece entirely out of plastic. It took nearly 12 years of development work before the idea could be put into practice.

Miniatures Y-Chair

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Hans J. Wegner is one of the leading representatives of traditional Danish furniture design. His work has a sound basis, namely a thorough training as a carpenter, and is rooted in a family tradition of craftsmen. He had already learned how to handle shapes and tools in his father's shoe-making shop. During his studies in Copenhagen he became familiar with masters of the Danish art of furniture-making. Wegner takes ideas from artistic joinery the world over and makes them specifically Danish. The models for his Y Chair stem from China. The Y that is the backrest resembles the natural forking of a branch. The plaited seat is a reference to the grass along the shallow shores of the Danish landscape, and is in the tradition of northwest European utilitarian chairs.

Wall Clocks - Fan Clock

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With his collection of Wall Clocks (1949-1960), George Nelson conceived a wide array of timepieces, many of which have since become icons of 1950s design.

Miniatures Zig Zag Stoel

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Along with the Rood Blauwe Stoel (1918), the Zig Zag Stoel is probably the best-known of Gerrit T. Rietveld's designs. Rietveld takes up Mart Stam's idea for a cantilevered chair (1926) and makes formal references to the Sitzgeiststuhl of the brothers Heinz and Bodo Rasch (1927). Although it is constructed with four individual boards, the Zig Zag Stoel represents a variation on an old theme: the chair made from a single piece of wood. It was only four years later that Rietveld succeeded in building the first cantilevered chair made with a single sheet of plywood. Nevertheless, the Zig Zag Stoel is regarded as an admirable synthesis of form, function and construction. It was produced with and without armrests, with a perforated or solid back surface, and in a child high chair version.

Miniatures Antony

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The architect, engineer and designer Jean Prouvé was intent both in his architectural and design work on employing highly-advanced metal working techniques to create innovative constructions and shapes. He played an influential role in developing a construction method for architecture based on lightweight prefabricated sections, and drew amongst other things on this knowledge of aircraft and car construction. In 1947, he set up his own company Ateliers Jean Prouvé, which not only produced these lightweight elements, but also his own furniture designs. In 1955, Prouvé took part with the support of the French designer group Union des Artistes Modernes, in a competition for the furnishing of a student residence in Antony near Paris. Collaborating with Charlotte Perriand, he produced an exemplary furniture series for the leisure area, the cafeterias and a series of rooms in the student residence. His series included the chair shown here, which Prouvé had designed a similar version of for Strasbourg university as early as 1950.

Miniatures Garden Egg

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The Garden Egg was originally intended to be a garden chair. At that time Peter Ghyczy was working for the synthetics manufacturer Elastogran/Reuter in Lemförde. As leader of the design department, his tasks included exploring suitable areas of application for what were then new and particularly promising synthetic materials. The most prominent and later legendary example of this work was the Garden Egg. As the name of the chair implies, this is an eggshaped object with a flat underside and a folding top. When open, the top forms the backrest. Inside there are soft cushions for comfort. When closed, the weather-proof, rain-proof 'shell' ensures that the chair can be kept outside all year round.

Miniatures Heart-Shaped Cone Chair

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In the thirties and forties, Scandinavian design followed the principles of functionalism: simple structures, clear lines, a lightweight visual appearance. The desire for austerity of form was combined with a preference for wood as a natural material. It was not until the fifties that young designers like Verner Panton began to use the formal possibilities created by innovative technologies in order to liberate furniture from the constraints of tradition. Verner Panton wrote of his works: »I try to forget existing examples, even if they are well made, and find my own way of coming to terms with the materials. The result seldom has four legs, not because I do not want to make a chair but because working with new materials like wire mesh and polyester demands new forms.« The Heart Shaped Cone Chair embodies the transformation that took place in Scandinavian design in the late fifties. The purist furniture of lassical modernism was now joined by sculptural forms inspired by the new technologies. At the same time, the shape and color of the Cone Chair anticipate the »Pop Art« furniture of the sixties.

Miniatures Hill House 1

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Charles Rennie Mackintosh was one of the great representatives of Art Nouveau. Together with his wife Margaret McDonald, her sister Frances, and his brother-in-law Herbert McNair, he developed an original style that set itself apart from the decorative floral style of Jugendstil. The group's geometric, almost cubist designs for furniture show the influence of Japanese spacial concepts and are distinguished by their elongated, severe forms. A typical aspect of their work is a formal scheme based on horizontal and vertical lines, occasionally combined with slightly curved linear ornamentation. Hill House 1 marks a new phase in the work of Mackintosh. The chair´s strict geometry recalls the Ladderback Chairs of the Shakers and clearly differs from the organic or feminine forms of early designs. It was made for the house of a Scottish publisher and his wife and functioned more as part of an artistic environment than as a piece of furniture for everyday use. The chair was assigned a set place in the bedroom of the couple, where it fulfilled a purely decorative function. The extended back, first used by Mackintosh in 1897, is a motif that appears repeatedly in his chairs and gives them an unmistakable quality.

Miniatures Johnson Wax Chair

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The Johnson Wax Chair is characterized by round forms which also reflect the lines of a famous building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, namely the S.C. Johnson & Son Company Administration Building in Racine, Wisconsin. When it was opened in 1939, the company building caused a veritable sensation. Illumination is exclusively by means of surface lighting and the pictures of the offices featuring a »forest« of the round pillars complete with leaves and buds were seen the world over. Wright believed the furniture, rooms and even the building itself were an abstracted organic continuation of the surrounding landscape or cityscape. Scale 1:6, 8 x 144 x 101 mm Material: Metal, cloth upholstery, cherry wood

Miniatures Knotted Chair

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Knotted Chair is made of knotted netting soaked in artificial resin and simply hung out to dry. This produces a highly expressive seat shell which is as fragile, transparent and light as a hammock but is as solid as a seat should be. The use of simple knotted cords gives Knotted Chair that additional »warm«, personal feeling. Wanders description of Knotted Chair: »The design is based on three innovations. Firstly, the process of hardening a textile in such a way that it can serve as a constructional element, becoming part of the structure of a three-dimensional product. Secondly, the use of knotting techniques to create curved, solid surfaces and structures. Thirdly, the manufacture of an industrial product made of plastic without resorting to a mould, but by simply making use of gravity and artificial resin as a stiffening agent. Of course these factors are decisive in determining the quality of the chair. I personally, however, I am more enthusiastic about the chair's formal appeal and the meaning its external appearance lends it. It is a chair which tells you it was made for you alone, with a great deal of love, creativity and care, a chair which thus has its own personal and individual character, a chair which shows its relationship to you by letting you see different details every time you use it.

Miniatures La Mamma

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La Mamma (Donna) is completely in tune with the spirit of Pop Art and the Gaetano Pasce fondness for anthropomorphic shapes. The chair was actually designed to resemble a prehistoric, female fertility figure, with a ball attached to symbolize captivity. The unconventional nature of the shape also applies to the construction and marketing of the chair which was one of a series of six. Together they succeeded in marking a radical break from traditional upholstery production thanks to the technology developed by C & B Italia for creating oversized foam parts. Donna consists of a molded monoblock of foam withut any supporting structure since the foam rubber is dense and free-standing. First a finished piece of furniture covered with elastic nylon jersey is reduced in a vacuum chamber to about 10% of its normal volume and is then wrapped in airtight foil. The customer can easily transport the otherwise unwieldy piece single-handedly. After removal of the wrapper at the destination, the chair slowly recoveres its original shape without outside help as air seeps back into the capillaries of the polyurethane foam.

Miniatures Laminated Chair

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Designed by Grete Jalk (1920-2006) in 1963, the Laminated Chair is regarded today as the Danish designer's best-known work. The chair, for which Jalk also created a companion side table, was realised in collaboration with the cabinetmaker Poul Jeppesen. Although it won first prize in a competition organised by the British newspaper Daily Mail during the year of its inception, the chair never went into industrial production. Probably only a few pieces from the original series of approximately 300 still exist today. This explains the extremely high prices that have been paid for this model at international auctions in recent years. The expressive sculptural form of the chair, composed of two similarly shaped pieces of moulded plywood, marks a late highlight in the engagement of prominent designers with this material, which had commenced in the 1930s.

Miniatures LCW

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In 1940, Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen developed a chair with a novel plywood seat molded into a three-dimensional form for a competition sponsored by the New York Museum of Modern Art. However, it was not possible to produce the chair commercially, due to inadequate technical methods. It was seldom possible to press the plywood into a three-dimensional form without it breaking or splitting. During the following years, Charles and Ray Eames concentrated their efforts on developing a new method. The plywood chairs DCW (Dining Chair Wood) and LCW (Lounge Chair Wood) are the result of this long-term experimentation. In 1945, Charles and Ray Eames returned to the idea of a seating shell made out of molded plywood; however the results were unsatisfying. They dispensed with the multifunctional shell and divided the seat and back into separate, freely articulated elements connected by a spine (frame). Each element has a clearly defined function, which it fulfills optimally with a minimum amount of material. »Shock mounts« – rubber disks bonded onto the wooden surface – connect the seat and back with the frame, which exists in wood or metal and in two different heights, either as a dining chair or lounge chair.

Miniatures Little Beaver

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Cardboard furniture as an inexpensive and light alternative to traditional furniture already appears as early as the 1960s. Most designs aimed at lending the cardboard the necessary stability through insert and folding techniques. Gehry chose a different method, which gave birth to sturdy cardboard furniture like carboard sculptures: »One day I look in my office at a pile of corrugated cardboard, the material I normally used to make architecture models, and I began to experiment with it, to stick it together and to cut it into shape with a hand saw and a penknife«. Following his »Easy Edges« from 1972, a series of extraordinarily sturdy cardboard furniture with a smooth surface, from the end of the 1970s onwards Gehry once again devoted his attention to the use of corrugated cardboard as a material for making furniture. »Experimental Edges« was the name given to unusually expansive armchairs and easy chairs with a rough, ragged- looking surface. Strips of thick cardboard usually used as the filling for door leafs were sawn or cut vertically to the corrugation lines and fashioned into solid volumes of varying shapes. Using this method, single items or small series of furniture were created, which were both furniture sculptures and surprisingly comfortable chairs and sofas.

Miniatures Lockheed Lounge

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Marc Newson originally produced the Lockheed Lounge as the centerpiece of an exhibition of his pieces at the Roslyn Oxley Gallery in Sydney. It was widely acclaimed and was bought by the National Gallery of Australia. Its concept was based »loosely, very loosely« on the chaise longue in Jacques-Louis David's 1800 portrait of Madame Recamier. »I had this image of a fluid, aluminium form. The shape was sculpted out of a piece of foam, the exact same way you'd create a surfboard. The only way to get the aluminium on was to beat little pieces of metal into shape with a wooden mallet and attach them with rivets. That's where the airplane metaphor came from. So I called it the Lockheed Lounge.

Miniatures Mezzadro

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On the occasion of the XIth Milan Triennial in 1957, Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni presented their first prototype for the Mezzadro. The stool went on show in its current form that same year in an interior setting displayed at the »Colori e forme nella casa d'oggi« exhibition in the Villa Olmo in Como. The designers used a common tractor seat for the springy metal seat, fastening it with a wing nut to the spring-based arched steel strip utilized in tractors to absorb the shock of uneven ground. They enhanced the stability of the cantilever structure by a wooden cross-strut that resembled the rungs of a wooden ladder. Each of these parts clearly embodies its task as a part of a functional whole. And what strikes the eye is the recourse to an artistic method exemplified by Marcel Duchamp's found objects or Pablo Picasso's assemblages. The Castiglionis considered a design successful only once they had managed to eliminate all the unnecessary components and an optimal formal expression had been found for this concentration on the essential.

Miniatures MR 20

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During the mid-twenties, tubular steel won favor among avant-garde designers as a preferred material for furniture design. The most important designs for tubular steel, now regarded as classics of modern furniture design, were created within the course of just a few years. During preparations for the Weissenhof exhibition in Stuttgart, Mart Stam developed a new chair type, the tubular steel chair with no back legs. In order to counter the possible instability of the cantilevered frame, Stam reinforced the steel tubing at critical angles, thereby creating a strong, but rigid structure. It was Mies van der Rohe who first discovered the elasticity of steel tubing and utilized it as a structural principle. Inspired by Stam's idea, he designed the first flexible cantilevered chair in the history of design in 1927. The model was produced both with and without armrests under the names MR 20 and MR 10, respectively. The tubular steel furniture of the 1920s represents a rejection of the conventional, overladen bourgeois interior of the time, filled with massive furniture and decorative trinkets. The transparency and structural clarity of tubular steel furniture embodies a new ideal in architecture and design: interior space flooded with natural light.

Miniatures Organic Armchair

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The »Organic Armchair« was a submission for the Museum of Modern Art‘s 1940 design competition for »Organic Design in Home Furnishings«. Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen, who that year worked together for the first time, won first prize with their »Organic Armchair«. One of the conditions for competition entries was that the object was suitable for industrial production. In 1941, the Eames developed a method for threedimensional molding of manufacture the award-winning chair. The 3-D seat, made possible by means of incisions made in the veneer and cutting pieces out of it, was covered in foam rubber and upholstered in fabric. As a result of the war-time economy and the initially high manufacturing costs, despite the original competition brief the prototypes did not go into series production.

Miniatures Plywood Elephant natur

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The Plywood Elephant holds a prominent place among the plywood pieces designed by the Eameses. In the early 1940s Charles and Ray Eames successfully developed an innovative method for moulding plywood into three-dimensional shapes, which they used to produce a wide range of furniture and sculptural objects. Among the early plywood designs, the Elephant is one of the most difficult to produce. Tight angles and compound curves require a sophisticated mastery of plywood technology. Designed at the same time as their children's furniture, the Plywood Elephant can also be seen as a playful counterpart to the leg splints developed by the Eameses for military applications – which were the very first mass-produced objects made of threedimensionally moulded plywood. Requiring complex fabrication methods, the Plywood Elephant never went into production. Only two prototypes were made, both of which were displayed at the New York Museumof Modern Art in 1945-46. Today only one known model remains in the possession of the Eames Family. In 2007 Vitra produced the first commercial production of the legendary Eames Plywood Elephant as a limited Collector's Edition.

Miniatures Ribbon Chair

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The enthusiastic, progressive atmosphere of the 1960s and Pierre Paulin's sculptural training were influential factors in the design of the Ribbon Chair. The curving loops of its shape, covered in colourful upholstery fabrics or psychedelic patterns by Jack Lenor Larsen, give it a captivating, futuristic appeal. Pierre Paulin himself interpreted the Ribbon Chair as a "coup de pied à la lune". A famous advertisement shows the Ribbon Chair on a runway with a jet taking off above it. The seat, backrest and armrests of the chair have a unified metal frame that is completely covered with foam upholstery and stretch fabric. The seat is mounted on a lacquered pedestal made of pressed wood. The de-velopment of the Ribbon Chair was facilitated by technological innovations during the Sixties, which led to the production of inexpensive synthetic foams. This period also saw the introduction of novel elastic fabrics that could be used to envelop a complex contoured shape without folds or intricate seams. The biomorphic, slightly resilient seat of the Ribbon Chair allows a wide variety of sitting positions and provides a high degree of seating comfort.

Miniatures Rood blauwe stoel

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Gerrit Rietveld conceived of each piece of furniture as an ideal, abstract composition of surfaces and lines in space. The rigor with which he put this into practice makes »Roodblauwe stoel« a key object in modern furniture design. The form of abstraction Rietveld adopts here bears comparison to painter Piet Mondrian. Mondrian, and later Rietveld, were among the artists and architects who grouped around Theo van Doesburg and his journal »De Stijl«, and whose radical concepts had a lasting impact on twentieth-century art. Rietveld reduced given realities to their linear and surface characteristics. Where Mondrian took landscapes as his model, Rietveld focused on the concept of a traditional, massive armchair, which he transformed into a geometric entity.

Miniatures Schaukelsessel No. 9

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In the second half of the 19th century bentwood firms began to manufacture rocking chairs which, as a symbol of leisure and relaxtion, corresponded to the need of the bourgeoisie for an appropriate level of comfort. Around 1882 the firm of Jacob & Josef Kohn put a model onto the market which differentiated distrinctly from earlier rocking chairs. A double loop, which clearly stands out against the framework, unites the supporting functions on either side. As a result of the back-leg-like supports of the prototypes like the Thonet rocking chair being replaced by smaller bentwood loop at the back, the construction of the chair takes on an elegant and weightless appearance. The firm, founded in 1867, had initially mainly copied Thonet furniture. Innovatory drafts, such as the Rocking Chair No. 9, helped the business to develop its own original style.

Miniatures Sitzmaschine

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Around 1900, the Viennese architects discovered a new means of expression in the bentwood technique. To them, the simple forms of classic bentwood furniture - a consequence of industrial production - anticipated the new aesthetic clarity they were promoting. Josef Hoffmann's Armchair No 670 combines the austere elegance of bentwood with the expressive formal vocabulary of the Viennese Secession. Its somewhat voluminous form, strict geometry, and adjustable back are attributes that suggest associations with the machine.

Miniatures Standard Chair

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Designed in 1934 the Standard Chair is one of the quiet classics of history of design. Prompted by the furniture competition for the Cité Universitaire of Nancy, Prouvé worked on designs combining metal and wood during the early thirties. He utilised the strength of steel for the base of Standard Chair. The back and the seat however, which come in direct contact with the sitter's body, are formed out of plywood. The quality of this chair is revealed in its structure and unassuming aesthetics.

Miniatures Stool (Model A)

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Charles and Ray Eames received a commission to design the interiors of three lobbies in the new Time & Life Building at Rockefeller Center in New York City. In addition to outfitting these spaces, this major project encompassed the development of the comfortably upholstered Lobby Chairs and a group of stools made out of solid walnut. The lathe-turned stools, which were also conceived by Ray to be used as small occasional tables, have distinctive individual profiles. The sculptural and decorative character of the stools makes the most striking impression when they are grouped together. These pieces were inspired by an African stool that stood in the living room of the Eames House, as shown in a photographic series by Monique Jacot from the year 1959.

Miniatures Stool (Model B)

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Charles and Ray Eames received a commission to design the interiors of three lobbies in the new Time & Life Building at Rockefeller Center in New York City. In addition to outfitting these spaces, this major project encompassed the development of the comfortably upholstered Lobby Chairs and a group of stools made out of solid walnut. The lathe-turned stools, which were also conceived by Ray to be used as small occasional tables, have distinctive individual profiles. The sculptural and decorative character of the stools makes the most striking impression when they are grouped together.These pieces were inspired by an African stool that stood in the living room of the Eames House, as shown in a photographic series by Monique Jacot from the year 1959.

Miniatures Stool (Model C)

vitra > Styling

Charles and Ray Eames received a commission to design the interiors of three lobbies in the new Time & Life Building at Rockefeller Center in New York City. In addition to outfitting these spaces, this major project encompassed the development of the comfortably upholstered Lobby Chairs and a group of stools made out of solid walnut. The lathe-turned stools, which were also conceived by Ray to be used as small occasional tables, have distinctive individual profiles. The sculptural and decorative character of the stools makes the most striking impression when they are grouped together.These pieces were inspired by an African stool that stood in the living room of the Eames House, as shown in a photographic series by Monique Jacot from the year 1959.

Miniatures Stuhl No. 14

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The »No. 14« armchair is one of the world's most successful, mass-produced products. It was the standard model in Thonet's collection of bent-wood furniture and is considered the typical Viennese coffee-house chair. By 1930, 50 million of the chairs had already been sold. A modified version of the »No.14« is still being produced today. Using the bent-wood technique developed by Michael Thonet, solid wood is shaped subjected to steam pressure and shaped three-dimensionally in iron moulds, this offers a great deal of scope for creativity in the design. Thonet's new packaging system was also revolutionary for the second half of the 18th century. The individual parts of the chairs were packed in an extremely space saving manner and then sent to their final destination, where they were first screwed together. The Thonet brothers combined industrial production processes and a business-oriented approach with a unique aesthetics, making a substantial contribution to our current concept of industrial design.

Miniatures Stuhl W1

vitra > Styling

Dutch designer Mart Stam produced the first prototypes for a cantilevered chair in 1926, using sawed-off gas pipes which he linked with elbow butting. The base frame, legs, seat and back-rest were created by a continuous loop bent at right angles. In 1927 Stam had his design produced by the L. & C. Arnold company, which also featured it in their sales program for a year. Unlike the prototype, the Arnold chair was made from a single piece of tubular steel with a diameter of just 20 mm, and with walls 2 mm thick. The bends in the tube had to be reinforced with solid iron rods, and thus lacked any springiness. The chair was painted black or grey, and, with its covering of rubber or coarse fabric, had a rather unassuming appearance.