PURe Visions. Plastic Furniture Between East and West at the Kunstgewerbemuseum, Dresden
For all that steel tubing is the popular personification of the rise of the novel in furniture and interior design in context of the developing industrialisation of the first third of the 20th century, that primary representative of the rise of the machine and its victory over craft, in many regards the real symbol of the progress of the period was the novel synthetic plastics being developed, Bakelite being inarguably the best known and most widely employed.
Yet while in the 1920s and 30s the likes of a Christian Dell developed interesting, instructive, objects from novel plastics, ably demonstrated the possibilities of the novel materials contemporary chemistry was bringing forth, their use in objects of daily use remained limited, not least on account of problems of structural stability and durability; limited, save, arguably, and unfortunately, Bakelite’s use in the construction of Walter Maria Kersting’s Volksempfänger radio, that piece of contemporary design the NSDAP used so efficiently and so knowledgeably to transport their nefarious agenda and toxic propaganda into every home. Yes, there is a lesson to be learned there.
The 1930s however also saw the first patents for a novel synthetic plastic that would not only demonstrate the possibilities of the novel materials, but which had the characteristics to enable it to make those possibilities realities: polyurethane
A material that, it’s fair to say, on its commercial introduction in the 1960s, revolutionised not only furniture design but furniture production as fundamentally as a Michael Thonet once had with his adaptation of the dark art of woodbending. While the colour polyurethane enabled brought a vitality and freshness and exuberance that, it’s equally fair to say, revolutionised interiors. Allowed 1960s and 70s interiors to Pop.
And while today polyurethanes are more critically analysed than they once were, their use is rightly questioned today, as is the proposition of alternatives actively considered, the developments of the 1960s and 70s, the positions that were advanced in that period and the understandings of furniture that arose in that period remain.
If often popularly only very poorly, superficially, understood.
As is the (hi)story of furniture and interior design in the two Germanys of the 1960s and 70s.
As are the intersections of the political, economic, social (hi)stories of the two Germanys of the 1960s and 70s.
With PURe Visions. Plastic Furniture Between East and West the Kunstgewerbemuseum Dresden go deep into the (hi)story of polyurethane furniture in the two Germanys of the 1960s and 70s and thereby also allow one to approach better appreciations of the (hi)story of furniture and interior design in the two Germanys, and of the wider (hi)story of the two Germanys……
Plant Fever. Towards a Phyto-centred design at Schloss Pillnitz, Dresden
While the Art Nouveau of the late 19th/early 20th centuries was without question inspired and informed by nature, for all by plants, one thinks, for example of the many representations of alliums, liliums, vitaceae et al, it was a moment that was led by humans, and for all one that placed human needs, human demands, human comforts at its core. Certainly above the needs, demands, comforts of plants.
With the exhibition Plant Fever. Towards a phyto-centred design Schloss Pillnitz, Dresden, or more specifically the Kunstgewerbemuseum Dresden and the Staatliche Schlösser, Burgen und Gärten Sachsen, SBG, the contemporary residents of Schloss Pillnitz, consider alternative expressions of inspiration and information, alternative human-plant relationships…….
Common Knowledge – Design in Times of the Information Crisis at the Kunstgewerbemuseum Dresden
“It is a very interesting thing indeed to ask myself certain questions”, reflected H.G. Wells in 1937, “How did I come to know what I know about the world and myself? What ought I to know? What would I like to know that I don’t know? If I want to know about this or that, where can I get the clearest, best and latest information? And where did these other people about me get their ideas about things? Which are sometimes so different from mine. Why do we differ so widely?”1
Questions whose validity and urgency were undeniable in 1937 as Europe lurched, helplessly, towards another war; and questions whose validity and urgency has increased in the intervening 83 years as we have acquired not only ever more sources of information but ever quicker methods of information mediation.
With the exhibition Common Knowledge – Design in Times of the Information Crisis the Kunstgewerbemuseum Dresden explore the complex relationships between information, the individual and society…….
Add to the Cake: Transforming the roles of female practitioners @ Kunstgewerbemuseum Dresden
It is highly unlikely any 18th century banquet in Dresden’s Schloss Pillnitz would have been graced by a cake that came close to matching the Baroque grandeur of the location, certainly no cake that would have had a richness, plenitude or vitality to match; cake as it existed in the 1700s being a much flatter, breadier, monotone, delight, one which we today would barely recognise as cake, but which then was understood as cake, the whole cake and nothing but cake.
Then additions were made to the cake……
Rudolf Horn – Wohnen als offenes System @ the Kunstgewerbemuseum Dresden
In 1968 the East German designer Rudolf Horn opined that “the changed tenor of industrial production in the socialist society, in relation to its task of satisfying cultural needs on a mass scale, raises the question of how despite mass production the consumer can realise an individual [domestic] environment, and in addition forces us to consider the problem of how the cultured personality can creatively contribute to the design of their immediate surroundings.”1
How indeed….?
It was, however, a largely rhetorical question, because, and as the exhibition Rudolf Horn – Wohnen als offenes System at the Kunstgewerbemuseum Dresden explains, in 1967 Rudolf Horn had already formulated an answer, or perhaps more accurately put, in 1967 formulated a framework via which to allow each and everyone of us to approach our own answer…..
5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for August 2019
According to our old friend Roget possible synonyms for “August” include great, noble, impressive or worshipful.
We can’t promise the following quintet of exhibitions will exactly meet such qualities; however, they promise to be anything but frivolous, undignified or flighty explorations of their subject, and therefore certainly should be tending to the August in August 2019…….
table talks — Tischgespräche @ the Kunstgewerbemuseum, Schloss Pillnitz, Dresden
“Low bowls with flowers, as well as flowers placed on the tablecloth and a platter of fruit, are the most beautiful table decorations. All table centrepieces with rocks, palm trees, ostriches, deer, and such are ludicrous, for these things have no business on a table, and all tall table decorations – even those made of flowers – are also unsuitable since they screen the dinner guests from one another”, opined Ellen Key of table culture in her 1899 essay Beauty in the Home.1
But that was then.
With the exhibition table talks — Tischgespräche the Kunstgewerbemuseum Dresden present positions by students from Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin and the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts Copenhagen on contemporary table culture.
