The Atlas of Furniture Design

Product Information

The Atlas of Furniture Design is a treasure trove that offers not only definitive information about beloved staples of design history, but also new, fresh and often unexpected perspectives, all presented in a generous format that captures the breadth and depth of this important subject. In 2019, the Vitra Design Museum will publish the Atlas of Furniture Design , the definitive, encyclopedic overview of the history of modern furniture design. The first step was to illustrate the major trends in furniture design from the early nineteenth century to the present. It documents 1,740 objects by over 540 designers, and features more than 2,800 illustrations, from object photographs to design sketches and interiors as well as patents, brochures, art, architecture, and portraits of the designers.

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.The furniture collection of the Vitra Design Museum comprises more than 20,000 artefacts, around 7000 of which are pieces of furniture. 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.

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. 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.

Mateo Kries, director of the Vitra Design Museum and editor of the book, answers the most important questions.

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. That's correct, the primary source for the Atlas of Furniture Design was the collection of the Vitra Design Museum. It contains comprehensive essays on the socio-cultural and design-historical contexts of furniture design, over 550 detailed texts on pioneering objects, and numerous information graphics that provide new visual insights into the history of furniture design.The Atlas of Furniture Design is the most comprehensive overview of the history of furniture design ever published. The Atlas of Furniture Design employed a team of more than 70 experts and features over 550 detailed texts about key objects.

The editors working on it had direct access to the physical objects and had them re-photographed for the collection.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.