Rasch & Einsiedler

Rasch & Einsiedler

Joke Rasch and David Einsiedler are not furniture and product designers in the classical sense: She is a graphic designer, he a freelance business consultant, yet the two share a passion for original design furniture of the 1920s to 1960s, classic letterpress and soul music. After their parental leave, the creative minds did not want to go back into their jobs and so chose to take a completely new path. In 2011 they rented a 140 m² space in Hamburg-Ottensen and created a hybrid of café and furniture store, where Rasch and Einsiedler sell selected industrial furniture items with history and vintage accessories under the name Ply. In addition, and together with a team of architects, Ply designs and implements modern concepts for the interior sector. In particular, ergonomic, durable design classics, such as the chairs and tables by Jean Prouvé, inspire the duo. In a similar vein in 2015, they acquired the insolvent lighting company Midgard, founded in 1919 by Curt Fischer, the inventor of directable lamps, and which included the rights to individual lamp designs and an extensive archive with valuable historical collections, which they enthusiastically combed through. A re-edition of the K831 with its movable lampshade was developed in 2014 by Rasch and Einsiedler based on a design from 1931. To date, all Midgard lamps are manufactured using original tools and machines that Rasch & Einsiedler brought to Hamburg specifically for this purpose.