Small is beautiful 

DESIGN: Danish design furniture is very popular worldwide. Not just as ’real’ furniture, but also as miniature models. The 1/6th scale models have found their way to the world’s most renowned design museums and the most exclusive shops

If anything epitomises Ernst Schumacher’s bon mot “Small Is Beautiful”, it is 1:6 Design. The company consists solely of Anne Donnerup and is located in two rooms of her home. The company’s annual production can be contained in a box of less than a cubic metre.

While the volume of production may not stagger the senses, its beauty on the other hand is indisputable. Anne Donnerup makes some of the world’s most famous designer chairs in miniature, on 1:6 scale to be precise, and according to exactly the same production methods used for the ’real’ furniture. In the same woods and other materials, in the same colours and with the same finish. The miniature furniture has become a hit in Japan and US in particular, where the demand is so great that Anne Donnerup simply can’t keep up with it.

Anne Donnerup focuses primarily on the furniture of the world-famous Danish architect and designer Arne Jacobsen. The miniature versions of his two chairs, ’Series 7’ and ’The Ant’, among the world’s most sought-after furniture classics, have become masterpieces in line with the originals. So much so in fact that the miniatures have been exhibited and sold at prominent museums like Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Design Museum in London and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Anne Donnerup: “In Tokyo I saw my miniatures in a shop which sells Scandinavian designer furniture. Seeing them there gave me a feeling that I have difficulty explaining. It was almost like seeing your children again. The thought that every single tiny model has been through my fingers, fine-tuned again and again, and assembled with loving care. It was amazing.”

Hans Sandgren Jakobsen’s stool ’Gallery’, one of the most prized pieces of furniture in the world, is among 1:6 Design’s other models. The stool is made as the art of the impossible. Formed veneer in three dimensions made possible only through exceptional perseverance and extreme exploitation of technology and craft. The miniature model is made according to exactly the same principles employed for the full scale model.

Arne Jacobsen’s famous chair ’The Egg’ will be among the new models for 2005. At present it exists only as a prototype. The ultimate relaxation model ’Series 7’ will come as a miniature office chair – in new bold colours and with deliciously smooth-running wheels. Something you can just have sitting on your desk and wheel around with your fingers.

http://www.scandinaviandesign.com/miniature