Design in small numbers is a phenomenon on the rise. Contemporary art and design are melding together, exchanging roles and justifying each other. Both shamelessly declare that they target an elite group of users, which, along with museums (and a few magazines) is the sole target of this marriage’s offspring. Investments in artwork appear to be astronomical, and the international auction-circuit success for design by the masters is constant, especially for those pieces that are no longer (or have never been) available via the normal furniture sales channels. So why not skip a step and land directly at the feet of collectors? Like a silk screen, a design piece can be reproduced in a few numbered copies that are destined, from the outset, for the art market instead of becoming a collectors’ rarity only after having been an accidental commercial flop. This is nothing scandalous. After all, visionary objects that constitute manifestos are the shining stars of design history. Standing beyond the requirements of ordinary distribution, they communicate change and renewal with just as much immediacy as work that is given to the press. On the other hand, experimentation is usually an enemy to business logic, but the manufacturers who practice it receive ideas in return, along with the energy to pursue product concepts that the traditional marketplace is able to understand and assimilate. Art has other priorities, quantities and numbers. Embracing the design-art niche is Rolf Fehlbaum, the illuminated entrepreneur and intellectual who founded Vitra Edition in 1987. “When we made the first Vitra Edition 20 years ago,” he affirms, “our motivation was freedom from the strict regulations and conventions of the design industry, and this has remained our propelling force. In those days, collectors of experimental design objects were practically non-existent. Vitra Edition is a process and a result at the same time. As a process, it contributes to our continuous work in the field of design. As a result, it represents a group of extraordinary objects that reflect some of the most advanced positions in contemporary design, available in limited editions for collectors and aficionados. These products are created with the built-in merit of being rare, so the substantial costs of creation and development need to be divided over a limited number of objects.”

In 2008, another limited-edition initiative made its debut: Plusdesign, a gallery and a brand that makes small series of furniture, lamps and home accessories, all conceived by artists and designers with a marked experimental vocation. Plusdesign is an actual place where ideas can be explored and different contemporary worlds and practices can intersect, where the boundary between artistic and design-related research seems to be increasingly thin and blurry. Asked why they want to mix artists and designers for the development of design projects, Plusdesign’s founding partners Lilia Laghi and Mariano Pichler explain that “artists who look for a direct physical impact on reality often make use of design on a practical level in order to obtain a privileged dimension where they can enter into contact with the public as consumers and offer a critical look at habits, aspirations and modes of consumption. Designers, on the other hand, who seek to verify the capacity of the intellectual framework that supports them, encounter art on an inspirational level.” Examples of the 2007 Vitra Edition were on display at the Milan Triennale during the 2008 Furniture Fair, and when compared to the first Plusdesign objects, similarities and diversities come to light: Vitra’s are visionary and radical, whereas Plusdesign’s are paradoxically functional.