smow Blog - Thinking aloud about furniture design

“Why are the sounds we play in our apartments always music?” asked the Danish architect and designer Verner Panton, “aren’t the sounds of a chicken farm, waves, the wind and many other things just as beautiful?”1
Questions that force one to question the difference between ‘sounds’ and ‘music’, but for all to question our relationships with the myriad ‘noises’ that accompany daily life....

Occasional table by Rita Koralevics from the Paper-up Collection, as seen Magyar Design, Otthon Design Budapest 2024
The first thing that drew us to Paper-Up a.k.a Rita Koralevics’ occasional table was the construction: the small wooden batons on the side implying it was possibly worth taking a closer look. So we did. And it very much was. Didn’t disappoint. Revealing...

A living room design by Gertrud Lincke featuring two Arbeitskojen, Work Bunks/Berths, on the left and right, home office à la the 1920s (undated, but before 1927, possibly 1924/5)
In 1926 the Dresden based architect Gertrud Lincke will opine that “women are decisive, paramount, when it comes to setting up a home”, and that not because of what you think, but because, “they are the most negatively impacted by the housing crisis...

Components of the Bold collection by András Kerékgyártó for Brave Home, as seen at Magyar Design, Otthon Design Budapest 2024
András Kerékgyártó wasn’t the first Hungarian designer whose work we saw, that would have been Marcel Breuer, but András is, arguably, that active Hungarian designer who has featured most often in these dispatches....