Osko+Deichmann chose a completely different approach. They wondered how a world of steel tube furniture would have looked had Bauhaus, Mart Stam and Marcel Breuer not seen how the German aeronautical industry had discovered how to slowly bend sand-flled tubes to exact patterns and to obtain perfectly curved tubes.

Osko+Deichmann began by making copies of known Bauhaus models, but with kinks instead of the familiar curves. As an invitation to an exhibition in Milan, they sent out a postcard with Mart Stam’s classic Cantilever chair, but made in their “kinked” version. With the postcard clutched firmly in the hand, we rang Osko+Deichmann and the first thing we said was, “we want to do this”. Their immediate, straightforward answer was, “It can’t be done for any amount of money. The steel tube industry is structured and arranged around the bending of tubes – not kinking them”.

But where there’s a will, there’s also a way and the energy to find a solution.