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Children's furniture becomes a focus once more, as infant-sized design icons prevail in the nursery and playroom.
Whether it's a Nelson in the nursery or a Panton in the playroom, today's kids crave cult classics.
The nursery is no longer a converted storage room, adorned with pink and blue bunnies and superhero wallpaper. Today's proud parents hanker for the same design classics for their precious offspring as they do for themselves. However, this is hardly a new market, as Swiss furniture manufacturer Vitra's impressive back catalogue of miniature masterpieces attests. The trend toward junior editions stems from the late 19th century, when affluent Victorians lavished luxurious nurseries on their little ones—in the name of style and social standing, of course. The trend continued through the early 20th century, as modern masters, such as Peter Keler, Hans Wegner and Eero Aarnio picked up on parents' desire for design classics.
The return to well-crafted junior collections may be proving a lucrative niche in the growing contemporary design market. However, it is not so much a successful marketing tactic as a response to a very real need for style amid the banal mainstream themes and inferior quality of the throwaway furniture now dominating the mass market. According to Michel Roset, co-founder of the French contemporary furniture manufacturer Ligne Roset, the company's recent move into the children's furnishing market—a six piece collection that includes Michel Ducaroy's 1973 Togo and Sophie Larger's Glup chair, designed in 1998—boils down to "customer demand, particularly on the UK market."
Are these pint-sized style statements grooming for a new generation of design aesthetes, or are they the latest luxury consumables for the new Victorians? London-based designer Thorsten Van Elten argues that quality design is for life, not just for childhood. "If the products are good, you will want to keep them anyway and pass them onto your grandchildren and great-grandchildren, etc. I don't think people would mind having Alexander Taylor's Kids-Rock in their house, even if the kids are too big for it. It's a beautiful object," he says. Whether vintage classics or future heirlooms, these childhood classics are set to inspire, for generations to come.