...To that end a Kickstarter project was initiated to raise the required €100,000 to 'kickstart' production; production to be undertaken in conjunction with a number of small specialist firms within a 40km radius of the Chemnitz Robert Wagner and Rowac called home — RObert WAgner Chemnitz — and that as they explained in our 2023 interview because it is and was important for them both that the Rowac Schemel remained in its "home region ...
...A process that began shortly after that fateful day in Seiffen in context of a public symposia in Chemnitz, where Jacob discussed, and praised, the 'Scandinavian' chair; a presentation, a laudation, which led to an interview with the Chemnitz Freie Presse in which Jacob asked anyone with stories or information to get in touch, a more hopeful request than hope filled, "I didn't think the world would be interested in an old kitchen chair"... The Archaeology of Domestic Life at SMAC, Staatliches Museum für Archäologie Chemnitz...
...The Archaeology of Domestic Life, SMAC - Staatliches Museum für Archäologie Chemnitz, test that theory to extreme levels, and also expand it beyond furniture and furnishings to all aspects of domestic arrangements and domesticity over the past 30,000 years... For all that, certainly for us, there are innumerable excellent reasons for an exhibition exploring domestic arrangements and domesticity, domestic life, over that past 30,000 years, or indeed longer, for the Staatliches Museum für Archäologie Chemnitz, SMAC, there are and were three very specific reasons: on the one hand the questions regularly posed by visitors in context of the models of the earliest houses presented in the permanent exhibition as to how life was lived on a practical, daily basis in such houses, questions models alone can't explain and explanations which a permanent exhibition can't approach rather which must be elucidated alongside that permanent exhibition; and which is also very nice, and very apposite, reminder that a photo of an interior space in a high-gloss magazine, a catalogue or a social media feed transmits absolutely no information as to how well, bad, comfortable, et al, one lives in that space, nor as to the actual relevance, function and value of the various settings and objects, just what objects one has and how they are arranged...
...Our five recommended new exhibition openings in October 2023 can be found in Chemnitz, Hornu, London, Brussels and Milan... "Home Sweet Home" at smac - Staatliches Museum für Archäologie, Chemnitz, Germany The neolithic tribe who inhabited the settlement at Skara Brae on Orkney, to the north of Scotland, employed local stones as shelving in their huts...
...As we've often noted in these pages the eastern German town of Chemnitz markets itself as the "City of Modernism", which as we've equally often noted in these pages is a bit of an over optimistic claim... For just as a swallow doesn't make a summer so being the birthplace of Marianne Brandt and possessing an Erich Mendelsohn department store building doesn't make you a "city of modernism" Which isn't to say that Chemnitz isn't without its cultural relevance: historically through works such as, for example, the Villa Esche by Henry van de Velde or Lew Kerbel's 7 metre high Karl Marx bust from 1971, and today thanks largely to the efforts of institutions such as the Kunstsammlungen art museum or the new Staatliches Museum für Archäologie Chemnitz – the State Archaeology Museum...
