Based in Westphalia, a traditional furniture region, this company does not fit at all into its down-to-earth surroundings. Its only standard line is “no line”, is how owners Rainer Krause and Michael von Jakubowski describe their unconventional strategy. As a matter of fact, the manufacturer with the somewhat academic-sounding double name has its roots in a time when the principle of negation was triumphant. With origins in the gallery milieu, situated somewhere between design, art, architecture and fashion, Anthologie Quartett was engendered by the spirit of insubordination that prevailed in the 1980s, when the protagonists of Memphis and “New German Design” stood the rules of design on their head. Today, what is perhaps the most unusual line of products in the industry encompasses an extensive collection of lamps and individual pieces as well as furniture systems, jewellery, porcelain and additional home accessories. Production is carried out by a network of small to medium-sized crafts enterprises sprinkled across Europe, in which the kind of highly prized expertise can still be found that threatens to be lost. On the company’s impressive list of past designers are more than 150 names, over one hundred of which are still represented in the collection. The history of German design is reflected by personalities such as Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Richard Riemerschmid and Marcel Breuer. Overall, however, a marked international profile is conspicuous: from old-time great Ettore Sottsass, whose series Indian Memories is to be reissued for his 90th birthday, to the fragile furniture of Czech designer Bohuslav Horak. New in the line-up is historical grotto furniture, a romantic fad of the 19th century that the firm dared to revive recently without any audible protest from the ranks of the critics. Headquarters of the company with its 25 employees is Hünnefeld Castle, a popular tourist destination in the Teutoburg Forest, in the granary of which a brand new showroom has been built. The castle setting might sound elitist, but the company is by no means divorced from reality. The fact that “by relying on one’s own style and not orienting oneself toward the mass market”, in Jakubowski’s words, “it’s possible to do good business,” has been proven by Anthologie Quartett once and for all. And this is demonstrated not only by Cellula, a modern iconic chandelier and perhaps the most-copied lamp in recent years.
