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Sketches from an Antique Shop "The form follows the function" - Bauhaus The works of art that regenerated into colossal design objects came into existence as the fruit of great architects' and designers' thoughts, as a reflection to the challenge that nature could offer. The Danish architect Paul Henningsen transformed artichoke leaves into an illuminant body offering a transparent light over wide opened slabs. In 1955 Massino Vignelli (for the Italian studio Venini) designed a clean-line table lamp from two-colour glass in the shape of a mushroom, which also gave its name. In a postmodernist sensitive cohabitation of Japanese and European culture the Japanese designer Masanori Umeda designer chairs in the shape of roses and orchids. In 1971 (five years prior to his death) the famous surrealism representative, sculptor and photographer Man Ray surprised everyone with a seat in the shape of a human eye. He entitled it "The Witness" and it presents a result of his thoughts as regards the absurdity of the intellect and the sense of non-consciousness. In 1950 the Italian Harry Bertoia uses the idea of a diamond, buried deep into the soil, to create an innovative chair in the form of a wire sculpture. In the search for new ideas of non-conventional expressions of installing elements this chair is (fifty years later) incorporated with a black secession desk by an admirer and connoisseur of interior design. To sit on Bertoin's "Diamond", to be comfortably stretched on the wire backrest of this chair, relax, listen to music or lead a conversation; the designers' philosophy that the form should follow the function can also be a challenge to ourselves. Karin Košak |
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