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Telling Tales showcases designers from Europe, mainly Dutch designers including Tord Boontje, Maarten Baas, Jurgen Bey and Studio Job. Their furniture ‘objects’ combine functionality, originality and fantasy, but also have a deeper meaning. 

Going into the ‘Forest’ you can stay on the straight path, or get lost. There are childlike, 'innocent' pieces of furniture that put the world on its head (how about a boat-bath?) and the two wardrobes on display challenge our preconceptions about what a wardrobe is. Fairy tales and myths are important here; Little Red Riding Hood and Genesis are juxtaposed in the design.

And if you think that by entering the second room you're out of the woods, you are mistaken. The Enchanted Castle tears up one’s ideas of proportion, functionality and the relationship between art and day to day objects. 

Here we enter the adult world, against a setting inspired by the 18th century, when the first novels appeared. References are made to Jack and the Bean Stalk (still a fairy tale), Alice in Wonderland and Gulliver's Travels. 

The sound in the room reminded me of a Dr. Who episode 'The Girl in the Fireplace' .it's the sound of a clock mechanism reeling off and the ticking and striking of clocks. Quite eerie, and a bit menacing, too. The furniture has a distinct feel of luxury, with heavy structures and gold and black decorations. This was still good fun with pieces like a chair underneath a mirror and a painting; and a set of chairs, with some peculiar back rests. 

The third room is where it gets deadly serious. Here the designs are influenced by human hopes, anxieties and fears of Hell. Still, there’s lots of humour around, albeit morbid. How about a hugging pillow, shaped like a nuclear mushroom-cloud, for when you feel down or depressed?  Or chilling out on a beautiful snow white mohair cushion, until you realise it portrays (and very strikingly) a nuclear explosion on an atoll. Walls around the objects force you to walk through narrow corridors, sometimes leading to a dead end. How symbolic. 

Unlike in the other two rooms there is no overview (there's also no sound); you need to look at the objects through windows in the walls, which restrict your view. However, as you walk on and peer through another window, you get a different view of the objects. Very cleverly done. Needless to say the dominant colour here is black, with some red, and the only lighting is on the objects; visitors have to find their way in the dark. Dante and Freud reign here. 

At first glance one could say that the exhibition shows us that it is possible to make a design statement and at the same time deliver a functional piece of art/design, unlike some 'fashion statements' one sees on the cat walk. 

If you dig a bit deeper the exhibition becomes a life story: artfully designed objects take the viewer from childhood, through adulthood towards death, and leave you with thoughts you never thought you would get by looking at a chair!

By Marja Kingma