...USM Haller A Fritz; A Ball; A System Within the diaries of Heidi, those central documents in the re-telling of the earliest (hi)story of the contemporary Switzerland, it is recorded that one of the oldest examples of vernacular Swiss furniture is the modular metal storage system of the Usm...
Switzerland A Confoederatio; A Range; A Context For a great many centuries the lands of the contemporary Switzerland were unknown, locked as they were behind and between the towering, daunting, peaks of the Toblerone cordillera; but then a fearless explorer...
...Kempten - Dedication of the Anna Schwegelin Fountain: Oh Bondage, Up Yours - X-ray Spex Long believed to have been the last witch executed in the lands of the contemporary Germany, a belief largely debunked by the discovery in the 1990s of a record of her death in Kempten prison in 1781, some 6 years after her believed execution in the city, Anna Schwegelin is without question one of the last women convicted of being a witch, and persecuted for being a witch, in the lands of the contemporary Germany... If an initiative which needed a very long breath: on June 27th 2002 the Anna-Schwegelin-Brunnen was dedicated on Kempten's Residenzplatz, in front of the District Court, the end of a 17 year campaign which, again as best we can ascertain, was fought against much resistance from the authorities and political leadership in Kempten who, apparently, understood little need for a memorial, a monument, for Anna Schwegelin...
...Kempten, Höhenegg, 915m: Grateful Dead - Friend of the Devil Situated in Mariaberg in south-western Kempten, and offering views over both Kempten and the Alps, the path to Höhenegg takes you past the so-called Mulzer-Föhre, a solitary Scots Pine - and solitary Scots do - planted in memory of Max Ritter von Mulzer, one of the most successful, i...
...Staged under the title "Ambassadors of Creative Innovation" the Swiss Embassy 3daysofdesign 2019 showcase presented works from established Swiss brands such as Vitra, USM Haller, Création Baumann, Caran d'Ache or Laufen, who presented their new SAVE urine directing toilet concept realised in conjunction with Vienna based studio EOOS and Eawag, the aquatic research institute at the ETH Zürich; younger brands such as Viu eyewear or Zürich based Qwstion with their bags crafted from Bananatex, a textile made from, well, banana plants, not yet Zürcher Bananas, but if we're not all careful it may only be a matter of time, and no-one wants that; and students from the Architecture and Wood & Civil Engineering departments at the Berner Fachhochschule, who, in inter-disciplinary teams of two, considered under the title "Furniture for a Pop-up Embassy", representative, temporary, variable, momentary furniture...
...Kempten - Helene Nonné: Georges Brassens - Les Sabots d'Hélène Kempten and Bauhaus don't have the closest of associations, even Bauhaus and Allgäu caused the selection committee a few headaches; however, for a few post-War years Helene Nonné lived in Wangen im Allgäu...
...Kempten/Quiberon, Brittany: Bertrand Belin - Hypernuít Formally the twin with Quiberon was arranged in 1971 by the village of Sankt Mang, before being taken on by Kempten following Sankt Mang's assimilation in the course of the 1972 local government reorganisation; and although both Sankt Mang/Kempten and Quiberon can boast a Celtic origin there is otherwise very little that links the Breton peninsula community with the one at the foot of the Allgäuer Alpen... Given Sankt Mang/Kempten/Quiberon's Celtic heritage there was an obvious temptation to select a Breton roots artist, and the responsible committee got stupidly overexcited when they discovered the band Ar Re Yaouank, established by two brothers from Quimper...
