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"As an industrial designer, I work to briefs, but in the case of my limited-edition works I have no boudaries, so I can create my own parameters. I can let my imagination run free and express my enthusiasm for materials, processes and techniques--but on my terms." --Marc Newson

"I've taken full advantage of the market changing to do exactly what I was before, but in a slightly more attractive way. I'm using it as somewhere I can experiment rather than trying to make everything work from a commerce view." --Tom Dixon

"[I'm not interested in] just making stupid things for the money... I'm trying to push the boundaries of my profession, and my profession is making functional pieces for a market. I'm trying to come up with new ideas for this machinery, to search for a new grammar in my field." --Hella Jongerius

These are all quotes from Sophie Lovell's new book, Limited edition: Prototypes, One-Offs and Design Art Furniture:

Limited Edition is the new phenomenon in furniture design. The demand for unique pieces is steadily increasing. With prototypes, one-offs and limited product lines, designers are making furniture objects outside of, and parallel to, the industrial manufacturing system. Furniture prototypes have always been an element of the industrial design process, but now they are being brought from the workshops and presented to the public as embodiments of one of the most exciting creative fields of our age. In the global village with its standardized commodities, exclusive one-offs with an artisanal flavor are turning into coveted objects. The limited furniture series so manage to satisfy the collector’s appetite with objects where the boundary between furniture and art dissolve.

Limited Edition follows this new direction in furniture design and uncovers its background in meticulous investigative essays based on the author’s ongoing interviews with key designers, gallerists, auctioneers and manufacturers. With a rich selection of images it presents the very best from this new area as well as new and behind the scenes images from some of its leading protagonists.

via the independent