The Atlas of Furniture Design

Product Information

This was intended as a gift but as a result of the labels I had to give the book minus its presentation case as could not remove the labels without damaging it. The project has involved a team of over 70 authors and features roughly 2,595 images, from high-quality object photographs to reproductions of historical documents such as brochures, patents, interiors or reference works in art or architecture. Texts by Mateo Kries, Henrike Buscher, Jochen Eisenbrand, Fulvio Ferrari, Otakar Macel, Jane Pavitt, Ingeborg de Roode, Arthur Ruegg, Deyan Sudjic, Wolf Tegethoff, Carsten Thau and Kjeld Vindum, Gerald W. The richly illustrated book contains hundreds of detailed descriptions of key pieces as well as essays that provide a socio-cultural and historical context for four different epochs as well as the works themselves.

A small number of our brands participate in a biannual seasonal shutdown, which in some cases, can affect lead times. These features make this publication an encyclopedic reference guide and indispensable resource for collectors, scholars, and experts, and without a doubt a book to be treasured by design lovers all over the world. Featuring over 1700 objects by more than 500 designers and 121 manufacturers, it includes approximately 2800 images ranging from detailed object photographs to historical images documenting interiors, patents, brochures, and related works of art and architecture.You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. You not only have detailed texts on individual objects, but also essays, glossaries of manufacturers and materials, biographies and of course – something no such encyclopedia should be without – detailed infographics, including various timelines on the development of design worldwide or the evolution of ground-breaking furniture types such as the cantilever chair or the Monobloc.

The publication includes works by the most significant designers of the past 230 years and documents all important stages of design history. In addition to this the book also includes an extensive appendix of designer biographies, bibliographies and glossaries of manufacturers. Whether as a selection of iconic designs or as a history of styles, a chronicle of evolution or of revolution, a history of objects or of images, or a narrative of domestic habits or of individual designers, this book can be read in a vast range of ways. Over the past few years we were able to close some gaps to get to a point where we have accumulated an exhaustive overview of furniture design of the past 200 years.

The first step was to illustrate the major trends in furniture design from the early nineteenth century to the present. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. The basis for the Atlas of Furniture Design is the collection held by the Vitra Design Museum, one of the largest of its kind with more than 7000 works. It includes early industrial furniture in bentwood or metal, Art Nouveau and Secessionist pieces, protagonists of classical modernism like Le Corbusier, Gerrit Rietveld, Charlotte Perriand or Marcel Breuer, postwar figures such as Finn Juhl, Gilbert Rohde, Pierre Paulin or Gae Aulenti but also postmodern and contemporary designers like Philippe Starck, Marcel Wanders or Konstantin Grcic. Last but not least, in addition to the well-known pieces, we wanted to include some surprises and particularly highlight the objects that have become a part of many people’s everyday lives.

The Atlas of Furniture Design is an indispensable resource for collectors, scholars and experts, as well as a beautifully designed object that speaks to design enthusiasts. The book presents selected pieces by the most important designers of the last 230 years and documents key periods in design history, including early nineteenth-century industrial furniture in bentwood and metal, Art Nouveau and Secessionist pieces and works by protagonists of classical modernism and postwar design, as well as postmodern and contemporary pieces. The book touches on a range of subjects spanning the beginnings of industrialization to digitalization, which is becoming increasingly influential in contemporary furniture design.Mateo Kries, director of the Vitra Design Museum and editor of the book, answers the most important questions. In-depth essays provide sociocultural and design-historical context to four historical epochs of furniture design and the pieces highlighted here, enriched by a detailed annex containing designer biographies, glossaries, and elaborate information graphics. In the beginning of November 2019, the Vitra Design Museum published a comprehensive overview on the history of modern furniture design. The Atlas of Furniture Design is the most comprehensive overview of the history of furniture design ever published. With more than 1,000 pages, the »Atlas« is the most extensive book ever to be published on the topic.

Atlas of Furniture Design, published by the Vitra Design Museum, provides an in-depth exploration in the history of modern furniture design.Mateo Kries, director of the Vitra Design Museum and co-editor of the publication, explains: »The Atlas paints a portrait of our entire collection while simultaneously providing an unprecedented overview of the history of modern furniture. The furniture collection of the Vitra Design Museum comprises more than 20,000 artefacts, around 7000 of which are pieces of furniture. And we kept going back to the fundamental question of any collection: what is really important, what has staying power? And when questions arose (regarding a bookshelf that needed clever assembly), their representatives in Finland were so helpful and thoughtful.