Design
Tavolo con Ruote
Look through Gae Aulenti’s glass table to see how four industrial castors turn a workshop idea into living-room furniture.
Objects · people · ideas
Browse the Library
Discover the objects, people and ideas that shaped furniture, from historic pieces to modern designs.
381 entries
Page 15 of 16
Historic object
Tester bed (lit à la duchesse en impériale) 23.235a
Georges Jacob’s eighteenth-century tester bed separates its canopy from its frame. Explore ceiling suspension, collaborative making and replacement textiles.
Design
The Big Bubble
Alex de Witte’s Big Bubble gives a hanging light a variable mouth-blown glass outline. Craft control leaves room for differences between examples.
Historic object
The Farnese Table 58.57a–d
Nearly four metres wide, the Farnese Table turns coloured stone into a statement of Renaissance power. Explore its alabaster panels, carved piers and attributions.
Person
Thomas Day
Thomas Day’s furniture leads into the history of a free Black cabinetmaker, his family’s legal restrictions and the enslaved people who worked in his business.
Design
Thonet B 9 nesting tables
A nest of B 9 tables is furniture waiting to spread out. Marcel Breuer’s four small surfaces can gather into one compact group, then separate to follow the people sitting around a room.
Design
Thonet Chair No. 14
See how Michael Thonet joined steam-bent beech, six wooden parts, simple hardware and compact shipping to turn one 1859 café chair into a global system.
Design
Three Pair stool
Aldo Bakker’s Three Pair combines three curved stone elements into a small seat. Its assembly is part of the outline a reader learns to follow.
Design
Timberline Floor Lamp
Read Mads Caprani’s Timberline Floor Lamp as a balance problem: a long laminated curve, distant pleated shade, discreet cable and anchoring iron base.
Design
Toio
Follow Toio from an automobile headlamp and fishing-rod rings to a floor lamp whose borrowed parts keep their practical jobs visible.
Design
Tolix Chair A
Tolix Chair A makes its industrial construction part of the view. Its shaped metal surfaces and open frame turn the practical business of sitting, moving and stacking into a recognisable outline.
Design
Tonus wooden stool
Aldo Bakker’s wooden Tonus stool turns solid oak into swelling, muscular transitions. Rutger Graas’s making keeps the craft partnership visible.
Person
Tord Boontje
Tord Boontje makes ornament active through precise processes, materials and collaboration. His lights and cut panels give pattern a role in everyday space.
Design
Total Furnishing Unit
Explore the four independent volumes of Total Furnishing Unit, the 1972 exhibition proposal by Joe Colombo with Ignazia Favata.
Design
Traccia table
Look at Meret Oppenheim’s Traccia through its two bird-like legs, oval top and footprints, keeping the 1939 idea distinct from later editions.
Technique
Traditional stitched upholstery
Look beneath the cover to see how webbing, springs, hair and stitching shape a seat, and why old upholstery can preserve valuable evidence.
Design
Transience Mirrors
Lex Pott and David Derksen bring the silver layer of a mirror into view. Transience sets irregular surface changes within a clear geometric composition.
Design
Tree Trunk Bench
Jurgen Bey’s Tree Trunk Bench pairs a locally chosen trunk with bronze chair backs, making a shared seat from something a place can already provide.
Design
Tube Chair
Discover how Joe Colombo’s four hollow padded tubes can become a seat, change arrangement and pack inside one another without folding.
Design
Until Dawn curtain
Tord Boontje’s Until Dawn turns four folded, die-cut layers into a reflected natural pattern. The manufacturing sequence becomes part of the curtain’s appearance.
Design
UP5_6
Discover the original vacuum-packed UP5_6, its chair-and-ball imagery, and why the 2000 re-edition arrives in a different way.
Technique
Urushi lacquering
Discover how urushi begins with cultivated trees, cures in humid conditions and becomes a ground for gold and shell on Japanese lacquered furniture.
Design
USM Haller storage system
A USM Haller sideboard is one arrangement of a larger idea. Behind the coloured panels is a repeated metal skeleton, developed from an architect and an engineer’s interest in buildings that could adapt.
Design
Utrecht armchair
How Gerrit Rietveld’s Utrecht armchair brings a firm geometric outline together with padded volumes, and why its later Cassina production is a separate chapter.