It¡¯s 100 years since the Bauhaus art and design school first opened in Weimar, Germany, and the new Muji flagship store in Tokyo¡¯s Ginza district is as good a venue as any to hold an anniversary exhibition celebrating the values of simple, affordable modernist design.
Though sadly not a major retrospective, the exhibition comprises a modest number of archive photographs by artist and designer Marianne Brandt (1893-1983), three of her iconic ashtray designs and other examples of household items by Wilhelm Wagenfeld (1900-90), Marcel Breuer (1902-81), Wolfgang Tumpel (1903-78) and Theodor Bogler (1897-1968).
This is combined with another small exhibition on the evolution of the mass-produced chair, which features the Thonet No. 14 design, also known as the ¡°bistro chair¡± and originally created by Michael Thonet in 1859. A contemporary variant of Thonet¡¯s steam-bent curved wood design sells in Muji shops today. Several other instantly familiar chairs make an appearance, such as Breuer¡¯s low chair made from tubular steel, sometimes called the ¡°Wassily¡± after the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), and Danish designer Verner Panton¡¯s curvy S Chair, the first chair design to use molded plastic.
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