MAIN STREET. Design without Designers

Good design is mostly anonymous, irrespective of its aesthetic quality. Objects connected with a designer’s name are the exception to the rule. Shortcomings, demands, and difficulties often bear names, though: cutlery by Sottsass slips from the plate, TV sets by Braun have never really received a transmission properly, and lemon squeezers by Starck let juice and pips end up in the same glass. Lilienporzellan tableware or Thonet’s café chair No. 14, however, are as indestructible and functional as film cameras made by Eumig were – yet their designers have disappeared in the mists of design history.

The exhibition unfolds “a history of everyday things”: what makes design become design is not so much its production, but rather using it, looking at it and admiring it, dismissing and destroying it. This is exactly what the examples shown in the exhibition illustrate. And they do so literally: they speak for themselves. But it also makes sense to speak about them.

The exhibition aims at making its visitors look for good design in unknown and unnamed things. And it wants to convey the insight that this kind of modernism will not find its end for quite some time yet – we have only not looked carefully enough!

THE PROTECTION OF REGISTERED DESIGNS

Pattern and Portfolio: Copyright Law as a Midwife of Design
In 1842, the British Empire passed a copyright act which explicitly protected textile designs in the same way as literary texts. The act institutionalized a practice which had already become an established procedure in many European countries before: the depositing of designs patterns in large books or on cardboards with trade boards or administrative authorities. Whoever produced a specific textile pattern, a porcelain decoration, or a certain hilt surface, or even relied on particular weaving, firing, or finishing techniques for it, could protect them as the economic foundation of his business. Thus, thousands of designs, which can be ascribed to producers and techniques, but never to individual designers, were collected between the 1790s and the 1850s. The design cards, cardboards and books stand for the uppermost segment of the early industrial standard of production. In design theory, a specific ideology developed from these pattern and design books and portfolios, as well as from architectural models: prototyping.

FURNITURE
Iron and Wood: Thonet’s No. 14 Celebrates its 150th Anniversary
The chair No. 14 presented by the company Michael Thonet & Sons in Koritschan, Moravia in 1859 has been called the chair of chairs. Its production numbers have always only been estimated, and that at incredible amounts; there seems to be sufficient evidence for 20 million pieces in the first seventy years of its existence. Delivering it in its component parts – six pieces of wood, which had been heated, pressed into curved cast-iron molds, and then dried, ten screws and two nuts, plus a covering or a woven-cane seat – reduced the costs for transport and maintenance enormously. It was not only its unfussy style, but above all the manner of its production and distribution that made it an example of modern design. The final assembly is left to the buyer; the lack of ornaments does not result from a stylistic or moral decision, but is exclusively owed to the production process. It is the context of design, manufacture, use, and repeated reuse that constitutes the chair’s modernity.

Thonet No. 14
The chair of chairs: the Thonet No.14 was presented in 1859 by the company Michael Thonet & Sons in Koritschan/ Moravia. Until today an estimated amount of 50 million chairs was sold. In 2009, the chair was celebrating its 150th anniversary.
Image: Patrick Kovacs

Thoet No. 14 in its transport crate:
dismantling furniture for transport was already known in ancient China, as well as transporting house modules during the European High Middle Ages.
Image: Thonet Frankenberg

TRAFFIC
Let Them Roll: The Cardan Bicycle
The German Baron Karl von Drais’s invention transformed nineteenth-century local life as profoundly as the building of railways revolutionized long-distance traffic. The cardan bicycle may be regarded as a typical element of anonymous design history as media history: it is not always the better, more beautiful, more practicable, and more elegant solution which prevails in the end, but rather those which are accepted as given one day against the background of a mixture of industrial manufacturing economy and communicative canonization – a process no designer is involved in.

Bicycle „Graziosa“
The Grazoiosa bycicle was constructed by the Graziosa bycicle company, Benedict Albl & Com. in Graz/ Austria. The company’s slogan was “The future belongs to the chainless bicycle”. It was highly appreciated around 1900, but could not prevail in the long term.

CHRONOMETRY
Times Time and Identification to the Power of Three: The Vienna Cube Clock
They were simply there quite suddenly around 1905: Vienna’s cube clocks. Adorning all important squares and intersections, they radiated a metropolitan atmosphere as only to be found in London, Paris, New York, and Berlin, where such clocks had been mounted less than a decade before. Their design combines a bit of Otto Wagner’s modernness, something of Loos’s ornamentless solutions, a little technoid profiling and, at good last, sufficient coffee house gemütlichkeit, such as in the hands and the dial that does without numbers – which might have seemed to be too severe. Yet, this will not save them in the long run: their last chapter has been rung in. Chronometry has become a matter of micromanagement. Even if the Viennese are not running faster, the sensory regulation of their time has been changed again – by their vibrating mobiles’ clocks, calendars, alarms, and date reminders.

Vienna Cube Clock
Quite suddenly, around 1905, they were simply there: the Viennese cube clocks. Adorning all important squares and intersections, they radiated a metropolitan atmosphere as only to be found in London, Paris, New York, and Berlin.
Image: MA 33

HOUSEHOLD
Two Fingers at the Wasp Waist: The Economy Peeler
In 1948, the American-Bohemian inventor Alfred Neweczeral, who had been born in Davos, had his economy peeler for potatoes, vegetables, and fruits patented in Switzerland. For many reasons, this simple household device has become an index and exhibit of industrial design. It is the eroticism of its wasp-waist-shaped handle that has made it a star featuring on the title page of many a design collection catalogue. Making its appearance in the years after World War II, it goes perfectly with objects of the “poor design” school such as the “Ulmer Hocker,” a stool developed by Max Bill: minimal cost of materials, plain functionality, and multiple usability.

The economy peeler
The economy peeler: In 1948, the American-Bohemian inventor Alfred Neweczeral, who had been born in Davos, had his economy peeler for potatoes, vegetables, and fruits patented in Switzerland. Millions of these peelers were sold under the brand name “Rex” since then.
Image: Rex Werke

Hole and Hook
There are various cooking utensils that still offer subtle resistance to the doctrine of the drawer kitchen. They have either a hook or a hole to be hung. While in old kitchens you still hung everything if possible – whether on the wall or from the ceiling – cooking utensils are put away in drawers in the modern kitchen. But if you store the medieval kitchenware’s descendants there they tend to get stuck; drawers turn the property to hold onto the wall into an unnecessary ornament. This is why professional cooks still have their tools hanging in front of them.

The Clothespin in the Kitchen
It is not there to hang the wash but to close opened packages. Paper bags are rolled tight and fixated with a clothespin. The device has wandered from its traditional place on the clothesline into the kitchen. Design theorists have observed such developments and find pleasure in reflecting about what this means for design. One possible conclusion could be that kitchens call for clasps that function like clothespins. Of course, one will need a different word for them so that you can buy a bag of kitchenpins instead of clothespins.

IN THE COFFEE HOUSE
Coffee with Milk in a Josefine: Viennese Café Sets
Before the coffeehouse culture also fell prey to a globalized diversification of brand branches boasting their logos in Vienna, guests were served a set which comprised a cup suited for the ordered kind of coffee, a glass of water, and a spoon on a chromium-nickel steel tray. Between 1960 and 2000, the objects were almost standardized for about forty years, described by many travel guides simply as “Viennese coffeehouse cup, glass, coffeehouse tray.” (Almost) nobody was interested in where the objects came from and where they went to. Though the cup is still produced, it is threatened by extinction. The same holds true for the water glass, whose origins are to be found in French pressed glass forms of the eighteenth century. Who looks at mid-nineteenth-century coffee bowls with their gilt rims and colored ornaments, will find it hard to admire the small brown Viennese coffeehouse cups. Nevertheless, the loss of the ensemble, which has been an indispensable ingredient of Viennese cafés, marks the end of their culture.

The Viennese coffee house cup “Josefine”
The Viennese coffee house cup “Josefine” is the small version of the Lilien china with a brown untextured surface that sometimes holds the respective café logo on its inner brim. For about 40 years, between 1960 and 2000, “Josefine” was THE stardardized Café set in Vienna. In 1965 the Lilien Porcelain company advertised their legendary “Daisy” china.
Image: Edenhofer

In 1965 the Lilien Porcelain company advertised their legendary “Daisy” china.

DESIGN NUISANCES
Today, coffee creamer, honey, marmalade, margarine, and butter often come in small plastic containers with aluminum foil covers – who can open such packages without getting something on his clothes can count himself lucky. Design has turned into a boomerang in this case. Whether wrongly positioned levers in cars, folding chairs you probably break your fingers with, table extensions with bruise risks – all such items remind the user that beautiful forms must work and not only be imposing. The fact that the outward form of a device has often nothing to do with its functionality is a fundamental design nuisance. Media machines provide striking examples. It is the object beyond the actual device which is responsible for the users’ suffering; they are defeated by the item’s design before they even begin to understand its use: grabbing the remote control does not mean that the set operated with it reacts as it is expected to. The user is not only irritated by the apparatus’s innumerable buttons, but also by its so-called menu control, which will only be understood by people who have undergone a socialization in the sphere of digital game consoles. The dependence on invisible controls, which is on the advance, is a crucial problem of design.

INDULGENCE AND FEAR: FOOD DESIGN
With industrialization infiltrating all spheres of life, food supplies changed accordingly, seemingly without being based on a specific design concept. That food design refers not only to a particular article and its appearance, but also to an entire history of baking recipes, processing equipment, advertising and packaging strategies is illustrated by the example of sliced bread for toasting. The electric toaster revolutionized bread as a foodstuff, and ready-to-use baking mixtures and non-perishable products invaded the supermarkets. Sliced ham and cheese for toasting followed the square design of the bread. Fish fingers recently celebrated their 50th anniversary: when they were first introduced in Great Britain, it was to boost fish consumption among the population. As children generally did not like fish so much, the idea was born to cut cod into standardized pieces and envelope them in a batter of flour, salt, and water. With deep freezers finding their way into households, frozen goods, including fish fingers, were booming – in Austria alone, more than 150 million fish fingers are consumed each year.

Food Design: Fish fingers
With industrialization infiltrating all spheres of life, food supplies changed accordingly and brought new products where the term “design” must be applied. In 2009, fish fingers - under the brand name Birds Eye - are celebrating their 50th anniversary.
Image: Iglo

OLD AND NEW SIMPLICITY: ANONYMITY AS BRANDING
From time to time, an inventor, producer, or dealer claims to offer such a perfect solution for a particular consumer problem that neither the product nor its market communication seem to call for further design. In 1946, following a preparatory phase of approximately ten years, the American Earl Silas Tupper launched a set of plastic containers for food. He offered a lifelong warranty for the products made of this special material and marketed them under the name of “Tupperware Wonderlier Bowls.” The covers of Tupper’s soft plastic bowls feature grooved rims producing a slight vacuum which, in combination with the material’s bacteria-repellent qualities, ensures that food can be stored for longer periods. The design of his articles, quite restrained during the first two decades of production, was crucial for the items’ long-term success.

Tupperware
In 1946, following a preparatory phase of approximately ten years, the American Earl Silas Tupper launched a set of plastic containers for food. He offered a lifelong warranty for the products made of this special material and marketed them under the name of “Tupperware Wonderlier Bowls.”
Image: Tupperware

In 1980, Muji was founded in Tokyo, the last link in the chain of anonymous and invisible design. “Muji” is short for “Mujirushi ryohin,” which can be translated as “no brand, good product.” The initiative is based on a design philosophy that turned a Japanese convention – the obsession for simplicity according to the samurai tradition – into a branding strategy. The designers working for Muji must oblige themselves to do so in clandestine. On the other hand, the fact that Muji is known to collaborate with Thonet and a number of famous designers suggests that the group’s policy of anonymous product development is about to be dropped.

Cardboards speakers:
The electronic products made by Muji confine themselves to basic, essential functions without superfluos, over-complicated extras.
Image: Muji

PET bottles for recycling
Too many different or flashy cosmetic products may leave the bathroom looking chaotic. The Muji bottles PET bottles can be refilled over and over again and are recyclable as well.
Image: Muji

storage room
One can never have enough storage room. The Muji storage system offers perfect and innovative solutions that make best use of available space.
Image: Muji

TOO GOOD TO THROW AWAY: RECYCLING DESIGN
It was particularly in those countries looking back on a long-standing tradition of industrial production where a design movement emerged in the 1980s that refused to conceive new forms, thus questioning established design strategies to a more or less radical degree: it propagated a novel, revised, and hitherto unprecedented use of a given object, extant material, or old idea. This can happen in a quasi-impromptu fashion, such as in the case of tumblers filled with pencils or the endless variants of reutilizing paper clips. Such elementary design practices have meanwhile pervaded everyday life: be it the operation of an old coal stove as a barbecue grill, planting geranium into a disused sink, the use of old ladders as trellises, or the conversion of an old sewing machine’s support into a side table – such attempts are always made somewhat shamefully in the backyard or garden of one’s home and presented with mocking and self-ironic comments. Motivated by what may be described as preservation of cultural heritage, these efforts have not yet penetrated the awareness of design practitioners to a sufficient extent.

STRIPE AND CHIP CARDS
Ensuring payment with one’s good name, particularly in restaurants and on airports, proved to be an excellent business idea in the USA around 1950. Diners Club was the first credit card company to be established, following repeated attempts since the nineteenth century to use identity cards as a means of payment and credit reference. Magnetic recording systems for sound storage and computed data had become accepted worldwide since the 1940s. Around 1970, the cards – meanwhile made of plastic and embossed with the holders’ personal information and account numbers – were furnished with magnetic stripes that in turn functioned as a data storage medium and were to be swiped through reading devices. Such stripes may be programmed for all kinds of purposes, so that secondary and tertiary functions have been added to these cards during the past three decades: they are used as electronic purses and door keys in hotels and office buildings and serve as legitimization in transport companies, department stores, conferences, and various security zones, where they play a role in identity check rituals. The magnetic stripes as such, however, are on the decline; they are increasingly being replaced by visible chips or invisible magnetic resonance fields. What remains of this truly anonymous design apart from the small plastic card with its rounded corners are certain behavioural patterns associated with it: the enormous power of the people operating control units permits them to adopt the role of high priests of trustworthiness in all kinds of matters – obviously the embossing and one’s good name no longer count.

MAIN STREET. Design without Designers
Duration of the exhibition:	Oct.6th through Nov.14th
Curated by:	Rolf Sachsse (Bonn) Monika Wenzl-Bachmayer (Vienna)
Opening hours:	Mon – Fri 9 am - 5pm Sat. 10am – 5 pm
Information:	www.ottowagner.com/museum T: ++43/05 99 05-33088 F: ++43/05 99 05-33087 M: museum@ottowagner.com
Entrance:	Main Banking Hall Free entrance to special exhibition
Museum WAGNER:WERK:	Entrance fee: € 5,00 Reduces fee € 3,50 for students, senior citizens and groups
Free entrance:	Bank customers of BAWAG PSK upon presentation of debit card
Catalogue:	MAIN STREET. Design ohne Designer (German only) 72 pages, 140 photographs. € 15,00 Available at the Museum’s shop

WAGNER:WERK - MUSEUM POSTSPARKASSE - Georg Coch-Platz 2, 1018 Vienna