In 1960 Rosenthal opened its first Studiohaus shop in Nuremberg. It is still following the same principle today: The first design chain store in the world sells only products a jury has selected as examples of good design. And the Studio Line products introduced in parallel can only be purchased at a Studiohaus. Rosenthal was the first company in the world to seek contact with international designers, a strategy that would not be adopted on a widespread scale until the 1980s. At the same time, the company forged alliances with other German design-oriented firms such as Braun and Rasch. The product range reaches from Bauhaus Modernism à la Walter Gropius, to American, Scandinavian and Italian designs, and on to Luigi Colani. Originally established in the late 19th century, the enterprise based in the Franconia region had expanded substantially by the outbreak of the Second World War. An “art department” had been set up even before World War I. But design only became an issue after the founder’s son Philip Rosenthal, a non-conformist, democrat and visionary, took charge in the 1950s. The Form 2000 service from 1954, from the drawing board of US designer Richard Latham, was the starting shot. It was followed by the Berlin service by Hans Theo Baumann in the post-war rationalist mode. As time went by, the world’s largest supplier of high-grade tableware, which was taken over by Wedgwood in the late 1990s, expanded its offerings, adding glassware, silverware and furniture. A furniture plant in Espelkamp was purchased in the early 1970s. Big-name furniture designers were commissioned from day one, such as Burkhard Vogtherr, who conceived one of the early collections, the tableand- easychair ensemble dubbed Hombre. There was not only series furniture, but also artistic works in limited editions, corresponding to the Studio Line. Nail artist Günther Uecker created alongside his early-1980s reliefs also an individual furniture piece he called Lettera, a standing desk for quickly jotting down ideas. Of the some 2,000 employees working for Rosenthal AG today, only 45 are located at the furniture plant. One of the focuses is office furniture, such as the Cetera conference table system Cetera (by Lepper Schmidt Sommerlade), the great advantage of which consists in the individually removable table legs. Behind the concept for the Controller Serial Network is the vision of integrating all the technology in a room, including even the most detailed conference table systems, into a single control, while maintaining flexibility. An interesting piece from the collection of solitary furniture creations is Flying Carpet (by Simon Desanta), a lightweight, springy easychair whose free- form shape affords a great variety of sitting options.