Show 5: Philipp Mainzer on Ferdinand Kramer

Video Transcript:

So we have come here today to host the show of Ferdinand Kramer, or the pieces of Ferdinand Kramer, which we actually launched this year for the first time in Milan in April. And it has been, yes, a truly amazing experience to reissue this collection of pieces that were designed almost a century ago. He is a truly modernist architect and designer. And he was born in Frankfurt, emigrated to the states, and came back to Frankfurt and in this collection of re-editions of eight pieces we try to cover those different phases. We are truly thankful obviously to Lore Kramer, his second wife, and the whole family. There are three daughters also and they put all this trust in us to develop this collection and market this collection, especially since we are the only company at the moment using his furniture.

The process has been very challenging but also very inspiring to look through all his archives because most of the pieces are not really properly documented. I mean there are a lot of drawings and different pictures and you really have to analyse it properly to build the right group of pieces. So that has been hard work, but also has been very inspiring. And it was in 1925 when he did a series of woven pieces, so it is a wooden frame with leather straps woven.

Then he went to the States, he emigrated during the war because his first wife was Jewish and he got very much into flatpack and knock down furniture design. And that was when he designed the Alden table which is a solid wooden table but it knocks down and packs flat. And as well the Calvert and Charlotte tables which are plywood units, very simply cut from one sheet of wood and just using those cutters creates these amazing profiles when you look at them.

And then the last sequence was when he came back and he became the architectural director of the Frankfurt University when he designed the buildings for the university but also the furniture, the lighting, the door handles and everything. That is when he did the Frankfurt table and the unique clothing hooks for the university, for those spaces for different purposes but only for that university. So also, those pieces have been able to be put into production