These five pieces are renowned worldwide, but not everyone knows where they were created. Here are five icons of furniture design made in Germany.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/Thonet
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5 classic designs from Germany
Some furniture designs are world famous. These five iconic models were designed in Germany.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/ZB/R. Hischberger
The Thonet No. 14 chair
No other chair was built as often as this classic Viennese coffeehouse model, which was introduced in 1859. It has been produced for five generations in the Hessian town of Frankenberg. The beech wood needs to be exposed to steam for five hours in order to be bent into shape. The Thonet chair company has not changed anything from the original design of the No. 14 chair to this day.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/Thonet
The TAC 1 tea service by Walter Gropius
Walter Gropius' name is tightly associated with the Bauhaus School of design, which he founded in Weimar in 1919. Functionality was the guiding principle of the Bauhaus designers. While Gropius is most famous for his architectural works, his last design one year before he died was a tea service created in 1969 for the Rosenthal Studio-Line dinnerware company. It is still sold worldwide.
Image: Deutsches PorzellanMuseum
The WA24 Wagenfeld table lamp
The WA24 table lamp even lights up the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The German silversmith Wilhelm Wagenfeld produced a few models of this lamp in 1924. It didn't sell well at the time, but when it was reissued in 1980 according to Wagenfeld's original plans, it became a worldwide classic of design.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/ZB/R. Hischberger
The Wassily Chair aka the Model B3 chair
Club chairs were usually well padded before this piece wrote design history. Furniture designer Marcel Breuer wanted to break with all traditions, and his club chair with steel tubes remains an icon of industrial aesthetics to this day. The Wassily Chair was conceived as a commodity for everyone — but the designer model is far too expensive for that nowadays.
Image: DW
The FNP shelving system
This classic design is impressive for its ingenious simplicity, as the shelving system does not need any screws and can grow with a book collection. An FNP shelf can be set up in 15 minutes; with sections joined by inserted aluminium rails, no tools are needed to build it. The skilled carpenter Axel Kufus designed the first shelf in 1989. He has since produced over 50 kilometers of shelving.
Image: DW
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Many people associate European design with Scandinavian countries like Finland or Denmark, but Germany has also provided a number of remarkable contributions to design history.
The industrialization of work which began by the second half of the 18th century not only led to workers being replaced by machines; it also required designers to develop prototypes for serial production.
A major milestone in German design history came with the Bauhaus School, founded in 1919 by Walter Gropius. Architects, designers, artists and craftsmen experimented with forms and design.
Scandinavian designers would come up with their most famous works only decades later.
Later on in Germany, the Ulm School of Design also had an important influence on the country's output. Designers predominantly used plastic until the 1970s, when the oil crisis put an end to this trend.
When does a good design become a timeless classic that's still sold decades later and whose originals can reach top prices? Some pieces of furniture have such a high quality that they survive all trends and wear. They are one-of-a-kind pieces that can add style to any interior.
