Jasper Morrison (*1959 in London/UK), studied at the Royal College of Art in London before pursuing further studies at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin on a fellowship. In 1986 he founded his own design studio in London. Two early projects that gained attention were room installations, "Reuters News Centre" for Documenta 8 in Kassel, and "Some New Items for the Home" at the DAAD Gallery in Berlin. The stringent concepts of these projects, which featured starkly reductive objects, represented a reaction to the formal excesses of postmodernism. Jasper Morrison became a leading figure of "New Simplicity", a movement that advocated a more modest and also more serious approach to design. In addition to furniture, he has also created lamps, home accessories, textiles, a tram system for the city of Hanover, Germany, and a bus shelter for the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein. His joint 2006 exhibition with the Japanese designer Naoto Fukasawa, entitled "Super Normal", put forth provocative theses that once again stimulated great discussion. Through designs such as Cork Bowl, his Morrison Bench or his Park Sofa and Armchair family Jasper Morrison has, together with Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec and Hella Jongerius, made an essential contribution to the steadily growing Vitra Home Collection.
England An Island; A Notion; A Context According to the Folios of Shakespeare, that most reliable of sources on the (hi)story of England, the (hi)story of furniture design in the lower half of the scepter'd isle begins before the (hi)story of furniture...
...Similarly, Formed by Air considers objects filled with air to create stable, functional forms, albeit through processes a little more involved than "standard" inflation and including projects as diverse as Jasper Morrison's gas injection moulded Air Chair for Magis, Oskar Zieta's FIDU steel inflation process as exemplified through the Plopp stool and Rondo mirror or Marcel Wanders' Sparkling Chair/Still Chair for Magis, a work which also stands as a reminder that the inspiration air provides a designer may not be enough to blow away other considerations: Wanders' original plan was to have a chair crafted, in effect, from PET bottles inflated by high pressure gas...
...Fugu by Jasper Morrison for Maruni Over the years we've come across innumerable interestingly and bafflingly named pieces of furniture; Fugu by Jasper Morrison for Japanese manufacturer Maruni is however the first we've met named after a toxic pufferfish...
...Visitors to the Grassi Museum for Applied Arts Leipzig have long been able to rest on Jasper Morrison's Vitra Bench, an object liberally distributed throughout the museum complex... With the exhibition Thingness the Grassi Museum for Applied Arts Leipzig offers visitors a deeper insight into Jasper Morrison's oeuvre, and creative processes...
...Jasper Morrison, for example, became the designer he is because he visited a Memphis Group exhibition in Milan and then spent time in Berlin with Andreas Brandolini, Axel Kufus and other members of the "Neues deutsches Design" movement...
