C 2020 137
MSC: At some point in your childhood you
also began to take an interest in objects. At
that time, these were not objects of ‘design,’
the word ‘design’ did not exist in your world,
so how would you say this admiration for
objects came about?
AVV: I was born in the last two months
of the war and we were living in Düsseldorf,
surrounded by houses in ruins. Like all chil-
dren, we liked to go through the ruins to see
if we could find something, like gold diggers.
Once we found mosaic in what had been a
church. I didn’t know about mosaic floors,
but was fascinated by those small pieces.
It was part of the curiosity that has stayed
with me all my life.
MSC: Düsseldorf is an example of your
work, in general, which is ultimately the tell-
ing of a story through an object, contextual-
izing it to create a bigger picture. Sometimes
you invent part of the narrative to create a
new reality for these things.
AVV: That’s true, but I haven’t finished:
years later, it was in flea markets that I
continued my search for objects. You could
find just about anything, and most interest-
ing were the stories people told about them.
You might come across an identical object
50 meters further down the alley, and the
dealer would tell you quite a different spiel. I
continued doing this in the Netherlands and
later in France… and always tried to learn
something not just about the object, but also
about the people, who they were and how
they tried to go about their business. They
often made up stories, but there was always
some truth to them. I think that part of it
rubbed off on me. But the serious collecting
started with the Thonet pieces, when we
needed furniture for the theater. I remember
finding a lot of pieces, some damaged, some
broken… but we would use spare parts to
complete and repair others. One day a guy
came by and told me about the technology
of the chairs, and I was fascinated. So much
so that I traveled to Czechoslovakia to visit
factory places and learn more. In those days
it was strictly forbidden to go into the fac-
tories if you were a foreigner, as there was
a lot of industrial espionage going on, but
“I always tried to learn
not just about the
object, but also about
the people behind it“
