Curator Stephan Weishaupt: Man of arts

D.The last time Stephan Weishaupt was traveling was in March. He came from Toronto, Sebastian Herkner from Offenbach. The two met in Berlin. A table should be created. The designer Herkner also put a few initial ideas on paper. But then it became a project that Weishaupt could only support from a distance. The forty-three-year-old has been stuck in Toronto, Canada for ten months because of Corona. Weishaupt and Herkner had to improvise. “We spent a lot of time on Facetime,” says Weishaupt. Samples, models, profiles were sent back and forth in the mail. He stayed up to date in Toronto, but was unable to be part of the creation process, as usual.

In January, the prototype made in Germany was finally ready and could be brought to Canada. The table that Weishaupt’s Man of Parts brand is bringing onto the market these days already has a name: Savignyplatz. Herkner’s work is named after the German legal scholar Friedrich Carl von Savigny, professor of law and a good 200 years ago also rector of the University of Berlin, later the Humboldt University. Savigny was chosen as the namesake because the scholar referred to the writings of Immanuel Kant and called for more freedom and self-determination in legal doctrine. Thus, it says in the description, the massive wooden table Savignyplatz is “also a place for civilized debating and dining: with an open mind and a good wine, every problem can be solved.”

The furniture in the portfolio of the only two-year-old Man of Parts brand has almost all the names of streets, squares or districts that have a certain relationship to the respective designer. There is, for example, the Mainkai luminaire by Sebastian Herkner, which is manufactured very close to the eponymous street on the right bank of the Main in Frankfurt. Or the Alexander Street armchair by Philippe Malouin: the Canadian product designer grew up on this very street in Montreal. The Rua Tucumã coffee table by the Brazilian Osvaldo Tenório is named after a street in São Paulo, while the El Raval sofa by the Canadian designer duo Yabu Pushelberg is named after the Barcelona district that adjoins the La Rambla promenade, which in turn gives its name to another armchair by George Yabu and Glenn Pushelberg is.

Niche discovered for beautiful things

The two Canadians, who have been running a studio together in Toronto since 1980, played an important role not only in founding Man of Parts, but also in the first project Stephan Weishaupt developed 14 years ago: Avenue Road. “George and Glenn gave me the idea of ​​opening a gallery to show things that don’t exist in Canada,” says Weishaupt. Toronto is a metropolis and continues to grow strongly, but it cannot be compared with London, Paris or Berlin. “There was a niche for beautiful things, and we wanted to fill it.”