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Miniatures Knotted Chair

Marcel Wanders, 1996

Knotted Chair is made of knotted netting soaked in artificial resin and simply hung out to dry. This produces a highly expressive seat shell which is as fragile, transparent and light as a hammock but is as solid as a seat should be. The use of simple knotted cords gives Knotted Chair that additional »warm«, personal feeling.

Wanders description of Knotted Chair: »The design is based on three innovations. Firstly, the process of hardening a textile in such a way that it can serve as a constructional element, becoming part of the structure of a three-dimensional product. Secondly, the use of knotting techniques to create curved, solid surfaces and structures. Thirdly, the manufacture of an industrial product made of plastic without resorting to a mould, but by simply making use of gravity and artificial resin as a stiffening agent.

Of course these factors are decisive in determining the quality of the chair. I personally, however, I am more enthusiastic about the chair's formal appeal and the meaning its external appearance lends it. It is a chair which tells you it was made for you alone, with a great deal of love, creativity and care, a chair which thus has its own personal and individual character, a chair which shows its relationship to you by letting you see different details every time you use it.

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Miniatures Collection

For over two decades, the Vitra Design Museum has been making miniature replicas of milestones in furniture design from its collection. The Miniatures Collection encapsulates the entire history of industrial furniture design – moving from Historicism and Art Nouveau to the Bauhaus and New Objectivity, from Radical Design and Postmodernism all the way up to the present day. Exactly one sixth the size of the historical originals, the chairs are all true to scale and precisely recreate the smallest details of construction, material and colour. The high standard of authenticity even extends to the natural grain of the wood, the reproduction of screws and the elaborate handicraft techniques involved. This has made the miniatures into popular collector's items as well as ideal illustrative material for universities, design schools and architects.