furniture designer, office in Bretten / Baden-Württemberg

 

For insiders, she is virtually synonymous with well-designed upholstered furniture. Many of her models are currently in production, although the road to success was not always a direct one. Anita Schmidt followed up her philosophy studies with anapprenticeship in the furn i t u re industry. In the early 1970s she then went out on her own, specializing in the genteel culture of sitting. She has done work for many leading brands, including Begana, De Sede, Hülsta, Laauser, Rolf Benz, Straub andWalter Knoll. Schmidt has an unfailing sense of what customers want. At Rolf Benz, a manufacturer for which she developed half a dozen models, she made curvaceous lines popular. The 2800 lounge chair conceived by the seating designer from the Kraichgau region, for example, seems to float on thin air. A comparable success story – and one that has endured for over one-and-a-half decades – is the model 322 (1989 for Rolf Benz), looking with its slanting aluminium feet like the very picture of the “designer sofa”. With over 40,000 units sold, this is one of the company’s best-sellers, now reissued in leather as “2007 Classic of the Year”. A design with a double meaning is the sofa Kissen (1986 for WK Wohnen), which looks just like what its name indicates, a cushion, but is actually a full-fledged sofa bed. The well-travelled designer is always open to new ideas. While watching a blacksmith at work in Turkey she was inspired to try using iron in her work and developed on the spot in a small village prototypes for a furniture system that later went into series production (WK Wohnen, 1987). Although more of an exception as furniture type, Bosporus in a way sums up many of the qualities this designer brings to her work: It is practical, versatile and just a bit playful.