Miniatures Collection Vitra Design Museum, 1820–2011
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The miniature Wire Chair with tomato; Ettore Sottsass balances Rietveld’s Zig Zag chair on his nose.
The travelling exhibition “Dimensions of Design” showed collector’s items and prototypes of historical chairs on all five continents.
The Miniatures Collection is celebrating its birthday. It was exactly 20 years ago that the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein began making miniature replicas of milestones in furniture design from its great collection. As a kind of summary of the history of industrial furniture design – moving from historicism and art nouveau to the new objectivity of Bauhaus and radical design, and from postmodernism all the way up until the present day – the collection has grown to include more than 100 pieces. The chairs are all one sixth of the size of the historical originals. They are all true to scale and replicate the originals right down to the smallest details in construction, material and colour. Thus, not only have the design’s key points been translated in the miniature versions, but details such as materials, the natural grain of the wood, the reproduction of screws and elaborate handicraft involved have also been taken into consideration. All of this has made the pieces in the Miniatures Collection into popular collector’s items. At the same time they provide people who are interested in culture and design with insights into the history of the environments that we create.
“A miniature represents concentrated essence and the ‘full taste’ of the idea behind the project: like tomato paste.”Michele de Lucchi
More than 100 chairs have been made in the last 20 years.
→ Iosselliani Next to de Clercq