Children's Furniture and Design

From building blocks to blackboards to illustrated books, many design objects and artworks are made expressly for children. A depiction of a squirming baby seated in a highchair on a Greek vase from 400 B.C.E. provides ancient evidence of the long history of children’s furniture. Leveraging the power of mass-production, twentieth century masters such as Alvar Aalto, Charles and Ray Eames, Isamu Noguchi, and Jean Louis Avril created child-sized versions of their iconic furniture designs, as well as introduced rockers, play tables, and miniature desks into their repertoires. In recent years, museums and galleries have also taken a particular interest in children’s furniture and design, as showcased in the the exhibition “Century of the Child: 1900-2000" (2012) at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, “Design for the Modern Child” (2013) at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, as well as the founding of the kinder MODERN gallery in New York in 2013.