The Atlas of Furniture Design

Product Information

The collection is made up of pieces from key periods in design history and by the most significant designers and manufacturers of the past 200 years, including early industrial furniture in bentwood or metal, Art Nouveau and Secessionist objects, works by such protagonists of classical modernism as Le Corbusier, Gerrit Rietveld, Charlotte Perriand and Marcel Breuer, postwar figures such as Finn Juhl, Eero Saarinen and Achille Castiglioni, and postmodern and contemporary designers like Philippe Starck, Marcel Wanders and Konstantin Grcic, as well as the estates of design legends such as Charles and Ray Eames, Verner Panton, Alexander Girard, George Nelson and others.

Furthermore, the book contains a complete appendix that includes designer biographies, bibliographies, a glossary of producers and materials, as well as a keyword index.The Atlas of Furniture Design employed a team of more than 70 experts and features over 550 detailed texts about key objects.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. The book touches on a range of subjects spanning the beginnings of industrialization to digitalization, which is becoming increasingly influential in contemporary furniture design. In 2019, the Vitra Design Museum will publish the Atlas of Furniture Design, the definitive, encyclopedic overview of the history of modern furniture design.You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. The Vitra Design Museum collection, which counts among the world’s largest of its kind with upwards of 20,000 objects, including over 7,000 pieces of furniture, serves as the basis for »Atlas of Furniture Design«.

Furthermore, the book includes a comprehensive annex with designer biographies, information graphics, and bibliographies, as well as a manufacturer and materials glossary. The idea to publish an encyclopedic book on the topic of furniture design existed within the team of the Vitra Design Museum since the 1990s.

Atlas of Furniture Design, published by the Vitra Design Museum, provides an in-depth exploration in the history of modern furniture design. 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.

Texts by Mateo Kries, Henrike Büscher, Jochen Eisenbrand, Fulvio Ferrari, Otakar Máčel, Jane Pavitt, Ingeborg de Roode, Arthur Rüegg, Deyan Sudjic, Wolf Tegethoff, Carsten Thau and Kjeld Vindum, Gerald W. It 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.

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. 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. 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 first step was to illustrate the major trends in furniture design from the early nineteenth century to the present.