Der Stuhl. [German text.]

Weil am Rhein Vitra Design Museum 1992 Portfolio with booklet (68pp.) and a seperate 6-sheet supplement, 18x25.5cm., ills. in b/w., in very good condition. . ISBN 3980253996. Facsimile reprint of the 1928 edition published by Akademischer Verlag Dr. Fritz Wedekind, Stuttgart, with a supplementary booklet connected with the Vitra Design Museum exhibition Praktiker der Avantgarde. Vom Experiment zum Klassiker. The book and supplement are housed in a portfolio. Der Stuhl is a landmark publication on modern furniture design by the brothers Heinz and Bodo Rasch, originally published in 1928 and here reproduced in facsimile by the Vitra Design Museum. The Rasch brothers examine the chair as a fundamental problem of modern design, focusing on construction, materials, production methods, ergonomics and the transformation from traditional craftsmanship to industrial furniture production. Their own experimental designs are discussed alongside contemporary examples, including influential developments in tubular steel and cantilever seating. This facsimile offers a particularly revealing document of the radical design culture of late Weimar Germany. Heinz and Bodo Rasch approached the chair not simply as an item of domestic furniture but as a design problem in which construction, movement, material economy and industrial production had to be reconsidered from the ground up. Their experiments included unconventional cantilever constructions and the search for lighter, more flexible forms of seating. The publication is closely connected with their broader work in architecture and interior design and with the modernist environment of Stuttgart, where they also furnished two model apartments in the Weissenhofsiedlung in 1927. Their Sitzgeiststuhl, for example, explored ergonomic seating and the relationship between the construction of a chair and the movements of the human body. The Vitra Design Museum reprint is therefore much more than a historical reproduction: it preserves an important primary document of avant-garde furniture thinking and provides an exceptionally useful source for collectors and researchers interested in Bauhaus-era design, early modern furniture, cantilever chairs and the development of industrially produced seating. Heinz Rasch (1902-1996) and his younger brother Bodo Rasch (1903-1995) formed an influential partnership in Stuttgart between 1926 and 1930. Their joint practice, Brüder Rasch, worked across architecture, furniture design, exhibition construction and graphic design and was closely involved with the ideas of the German modernist movement. Heinz studied architecture in Hannover and Stuttgart and also worked in graphic design, while Bodo combined architectural and furniture work with a background in agriculture and practical training as a carpenter. Together they produced a series of experimental publications, including Wie Bauen?, Der Stuhl, Zu - Offen and Gefesselter Blick. Their work for the Weissenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart and their radical furniture experiments established them as important representatives of the Neue Bauen avant-garde. (AI-generated content description).…