569 - Oswald Mathias Ungers

Oswald Mathias Ungers M. H. Wilkens & Söhne A silver tea service by Oswald M. Ungers Comprising a teapot, sugar bowl, milk jug and tray. Using hemi-spherical and tapering forms with cylindrical slip lids, pointed spouts and semi-circular wooden handles. The rectangular tray, veneered in parquet-patterned rosewood, with opposing handles and a surrounding gallery of silver rods set between ebony cubes. Height of the teapot approx. 14.5 cm; length of the tray approx. 71 cm; width 19 cm. Weight excluding the tray: 1,088 g. Bremen, marks of Fa. Wilkens, designed and signed by O. M. Ungers, model nos. 8391 to 8393, numbered 35/101, produced 1987/88. The tray only with fineness mark. Oswald Mathias Ungers (1926-2007) studied architecture at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology under Egon Eiermann in the late 1940s. From 1965 onwards, he taught at numerous institutions in Germany and the USA, including in Berlin, Boston and New York, and, until 1990, at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. The defining element of his buildings is a rigorous geometric grid, with the square and cube as recurring motifs. Ungers’ unmistakable formal language is also reflected in the design of the present service, which was produced in a limited edition and is now held in numerous public collections. Most recently, it was exhibited as part of the major Ungers retrospective "Architecture as Idea" at the Museum of Applied Arts in Cologne.