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Functionalism? Formalism?
Questioning Marianne Brandt’s Tea-infuser
KLAUS WEBER
Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin
My intention is to give a closer look at and some short reflections about one of the icons of 20th century design, an object synonymous with the so called Bauhaus style: Marianne Brandt’s famous tea infuser, designed in 1924 and made in the Bauhaus metal workshop as model number MT 49.
An icon – there is a quite inflationary use of this word nowadays –, generally is an object not only highly estimated and admired, but first of all an object of worship or veneration. In the case of our teapot this admiration and – in a way – even veneration is manifest in the fascination of our visitors by this small object, and in the numberless quotations or illustrations in books on modern design. It appears – for example – most prominently on the cover of the British Museum catalogue on Modern Decorative Arts, and of course on the cover of Marianne Brandt's biography published last year. And the poster the Bauhaus-Archiv produced for the metalwork exhibition of 1992, using a blow up of the infuser, was among our best sold posters ever. No question that it had to be placed on our own catalogue cover, too. In Sotheby's Concise Encyclopedia of Silver it is used as a frontispice and combined with Giulio Romano's mannerist painting of a mythological festivity (The Banquet of Psyche) gathered around a fantastic treasure of gold and silver. Finally in 1998 the image of Marianne Brandt's infuser reached the top of its popularity and its maximum of circulation as well being used on a postage stamp of the German mail.
And of course this high estimation is reflected by high prices: The last version on the market (in silver) has been sold by Lempertz, Cologne, for no less than DM 340 000 in 1997, another silver version for about a quarter of a million Dutch Guilders at Christie's Amsterdam in 1989: both belonging to the highest prices ever paid for single objects from the Bauhaus workshops.
And finally there are fakes. Not yet false marianne Brandt teapots, as far as I can see. But at least we have been confronted with a most doubtful drawing representing some very peculiar tea infusers and pretending to be made by Marianne Brandt in 1924.
The Bauhaus-Archiv keeps one version of the small teapot made of brass, further versions in non-precious metals are treasured in the collections of the Bauhaus Museum Weimar and the Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nürnberg, both made of bronze for the body and nickel silver for foot and spout. The British Museum keeps a fine silver version. Finally there has been another slightly different version, documented only in photographs from 1925.
So we know at least seven versions in all today, possibly there have been a few more: a small number, indeed, according to the intention of industrial mass production so often declared as a program at the Bauhaus. But it is much in relation to other products coming from the metal workshop: many of these things were made as unique prototypes only.
The purpose of the small teapot is to keep a strong infusion of tea, to be thinned down with hot water. Its size is that of a teacup, the total height from the base to the upper tip of the handle being about 7,5 cm (measure is taken from our piece, the different versions are varying in size only up to a few millimeters).
The hand raised body, standing on a cross-shaped base, has a hemispherical shape with a flat top, the diameter is 10 cm (H 5 cm). The opening framed by a low cylindrical rim is placed excentrically near the handle, and closed by a flat inserted lid with a cylindrical knob in our version. A pierced silver strainer is inside.The short tubular spout is slightly narrowing towards the horizontal mouth. The ebony handle is mounted tangentially in a rectangular position. In our copy it doesn’t show the exact semicircular form of the other versions: here the curved outline is slightly irregular.
1st question: Is it functionalistic design?
Perhaps we should start with a definition of the term functionalism. Last year the Bauhaus Archive presented the work of the famous Japanese graphic designer Ikko Tanaka. He found a very simple definition for what he tried to do in designing elements of corporate identity for his customers: ”Easy to draw and easy to use”. Adapted to our subject this would mean: easy to make and easy to use. This certainly cannot be said, for example, about a teapot by Theodor Wende, made in the same period as our tea infuser, but nevertheless labelled ”functionalistic” in a recent publication. It certainly is not easy to make, nor easy to use.
If we apply usability as a criterion of functionalism to our teapot, than there is, perhaps contrary to some expectations, a quite acceptable result. It pours out the liquid without dripping (to be true, I dared to try some years ago, and very carefully, indeed). Marianne Brandt herself once reported that no vessel left the metal workshop without a pouring test. Perhaps the shape of the small handle to be held between thumb and first finger is not an ideal solution from the using point of view. And maybe the centre of gravity is not in the ideal place, but I think that all this can be neglected in view of the very small amount of liquid in the pot. There has been given a functional reason, too, for the excentric position of the opening: In an essay written by Wagenfeld in 1924 he told, that this should prevent dripping when holding the pot too steep. But in fact this hardly seems necessary if the lid is stucked in the opening, thus hermetically closed.
If we take a simple production process, also compatible to machine production, as criterion of functionalism, than our teapot can hardly be called functional. It does look very simple at the first sight, but in fact there are too many components shaped too complicated. All these components have to be assembled with a lot of handwork and very precisely: the foot, for example, is made of three separate parts, which have to be cut out one by one to fit to the profile of the body, then arranged to form the cross shape and finally soldered to the bottom. A simple ring certainly would do it better and easier as well. The exactly formed halfsphere of the body had to be hand-raised, because there were no machines for spinning in the metal workshop at this time. There always has been a fundamental error at the Bauhaus workshops in believing that simple – and this meant geometric – forms could also be simply made and, in consequence, produced industrially.
The infuser definitely is a work of handcraft, to be done by a trained silversmith, requiring a considerable amount of time. In fact there has never been, as far as we know, any interest by an industrial manufacturer to produce this model. This scepticism continues even in our days: Alberto Alessi, making the choice from our metal objects for a reedition of Bauhaus metalwork, really loved the infuser, but he told us: even with modern technologies the making would be far to complicated to sell it at a reasonnable price. In fact Alessi had to solve a lot of technical problems to produce some other apparently simple designs from the Bauhaus, as for example Marianne Brandt’s ashtray, also based on a hemisphere, or Przyrembels purely cylindric tea container.
And anyway ”nobody needs a tea infuser today”, he said. In fact there has been a striking fascination with tea utensils, tea machines and samovars at the Bauhaus. We know at least five types of these machines from the metal workshop designed by Jukker, Wagenfeld, Josef Knau, Gyula Pap and by Marianne Brandt, too. Normally the Samovar includes a small teapot for the infusion. Brandt's model is an extract teapot to be used independently, without samovar. Hardly anybody will prepare his tea this way today.
2nd question: Is it formalistic?
Reduction to a vocabulary of elementary forms is a basic feature of Bauhaus products. It has two preconditions: Johannes Ittens studies of primary form in his famous basic course were continued in the workshops. One of the standard exercises there was constructing a vessel out of cylinder, sphere or conus, like these three vessels made by an unknown student about 1921.
Itten's courses were continued in Summer 1923 by the Hungarian constructivist painter László Moholy-Nagy. And Marianne Brandt was among his first students. Moholy-Nagy also became artistic director – or master of form – of the metal workshop, together with the silversmith Christian Dell, technical director or master of craft, as he and his colleagues in the other workshops were called.
Without any doubt there was a formal influence of master Moholy's own artistic works on his students. His linocut compositions from the same year 1924 for example include elements as crosses and circle segments arranged and balanced on a plane. Here we meet all the formal components of our tea infuser, still limited to two dimensions.
This must have been the starting point for Marianne Brandt: to create a three dimensional object – it happened to be a tea infuser – strictly using these components being propagated as a sort of formal dogma inside the Bauhaus. ”Form and function always have to be designed clearly, one being the result of the other”, her colleague Wilhelm Wagenfeld wrote in 1924, ”And the formal reduction to primary elements was the necessary counterpart.” (”Immer müssen Form und Funktion eine eindeutige Gestaltung erlangen, in der eines das andere ergibt. Die Reduzierung der Form auf ihre einfachsten Elemente – Kugel, Zylinder, Konus, Kegel – war eine notwendige Parallele”)
Marianne Brandt herself has reported another reason: she later wrote that ”we were crazy about simple forms, because we were so much closer to the kitsch of historism then” (”auf einfache Formen versessen [...] weil uns der Kitsch der Gründerzeit [...] noch viel näher war.”).
Probably there has been a short evolutionary development leading to the final result of our infuser. The Weimar Museum keeps another small teapot by Marianne Brandt in exactly the same dimensions: here the starting point is a spherical shape of the same diameter, equally mounted on a cruciform base. The wooden handle is similar, but provided with a deep oval hollow cut out for a better grip, thus strangely reminding the shape a human ear. The asymetrical opening here has been cut off diagonally from the upper part of the globe, the lid being fixed with a hinge.
The result looks extremly disharmonic, badly balanced, and apparently difficult to use: filled with tea this pot would simply be to heavy to hold it comfortable between two fingers. Consequently the globe has been cut in half horizontally, thus reducing volume and weight – and there we are. Perhaps her teacher Moholy-Nagy had an eye on Marianne Brandt's work in this crucial stage of the formal experiment?
Finally we have the photographic document of a second spherical version, now provided with a simple tubular handle, thereby adding a much more conventional aspect. This version, indeed, is reminding Christopher Dresser's spherical teapots, but it can be taken for sure that Marianne Brandt didn't know them at this time.
Perhaps Marianne Brandt had in mind to use the geometrical elements consequently as a sort of construction kit, as her colleagues in the Bauhaus pottery did: just leave away the functional components of the teapot, and you get an ashtray. In fact she designed two versions of a hemispherical ashtray, in a slightly different proportion. But: the ashtray doesn't have the cross-shaped foot of the infuser, instead there are only three bars arranged radially like a Mercedes Benz star. Perhaps it has been made this way to correspond with the triangular opening on top. Anyway: the result is a loss of stability. This certainly can be called formalism.
The formal evolution we have seen may be described by this very free variation of a famous sentence (attributed to Louis Sullivan): At first there was form, then followed function. Marianne Brandt started with an artistic idea, and finally succeded to create a fascinating and usable design, combining a certain naïvity with utmost radicality. When we look at this small infuser and some other early works by Marianne Brandt – like her famous silver tea set including a closely related teapot – we always have to keep in mind one important and really amazing fact: they were created by a first year apprentice without any specific experience. Working as an expressionist painter before at the Weimar art school, she didn't have the slightest training in doing metalwork or even in designing threedimensional objects. That’s why some of her works done by herself in this period are – it can't be denied – of low technical quality to the critical eye of an expert. But is there another apprentice in the silversmith craft who succeeded in getting a top place in art history with his very first trial works?
Our small teapot with it’s striking simplicity: Is it functionalistic or formalistic? Perhaps we can say: It is a piece of formalistic design that works, as we have seen. But that's not enough to make it so famous. Maybe there are further reasons. It just seems to focus the ideas of the early Bauhaus years: Bauhaus in a Nutshell. A concise symbolic object definitely meaning: Bauhaus. Moreover there is no doubt that it owns the charming attitude of a miniature, able to attract emotions, in fact an object for a collector's showcase more than for the table. In a way there also is a parallel to the miniature versions of modern classic furniture, the cute little Wassily chairs, offered in many museum shops.
A contemporary admirator once wrote about Brandt’s teapot: ”How elegant this ”prosaic” functionality can be, how refined, how pleasing, even how playful!” (”Wie elegant, wie raffiniert, wie gefällig, ja spielerisch doch die ‘nüchterne’ Sachlichkeit eigentlich sein kann!”). Indeed: elegant, pleasing and playful, these are characteristics usually not applied to the design of functionalism. Finally: a recent poster advertising the ”International Marianne Brandt Contest” for designers even combined the image of her infuser with the title ”The Poetry of the Functional”.
Poetry? This reminds Puiforcats sentence we heard yesterday in Gail Davidson's lecture: that a teapot should not only be a useful object, but also a work of art ”to elevate your soul by its beauty”. So perhaps we should try to see our little teapot simply as a work of art, beyond stylistic categories like formalism or functionalism? It appears to be a perfect materialisation of an artistic idea, done in a moment of inspiration. Unfortunately Marianne Brandt didn't live long enough to see the tremendous success of her early masterpiece. But she once asked herself looking back to her work in a very sceptical way: ”Did I ever think about art?” (”Habe ich je an Kunst gedacht?”), probably meaning: ”No, I did not”.
At least one object from the Bauhaus-metal workshop recently has been declared by a German courtyard as a work of art: Jucker's and Wagenfeld's famous Bauhaus lamp – another icon. But here we better leave the most unsecure terrain of trying to make a clear distinction between art and craft: I can't.
There is a good deal of legend in the reception of many Bauhaus products. They are not always able to meet all the high expectations when looked at closely and analyzed critically. But this they have in common with other legendary things. Benvenuto Cellini's manneristic salt cellar never was a salt cellar alone, from a functional point of view. And who wants to discuss the technical or artistic qualities of a miraculous icon painting?
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© 2008 Bröhan-Museum | Bronze-Figur: Agathon Léonard, Danseuse au
bracelet (Tänzerin mit Armband), um 1900, Bronze, goldpatiniert,
Susse Frères, Paris | Abb.: Kaffee- und Teeservice, Maison Cardeilhac,
Paris, um 1890 | Webdesign unicom-berlin.de |
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