576 - Josef Albers

Josef Albers A tea glass and stirrer by Josef Albers (1888 - 1976) Glass, chrome-plated steel, ebony. The steel ring stamped Krupp V2A. Glass height 4.9, diameter 8.9 cm. Stirrer length 10.4 cm. Made by the metal workshop at the Bauhaus, Dessau, c. 1925. The glass was manufactured by the Jenaer Glaswerke Schott & Gen., the steel by Krupp AG. This rare tea glass with its accompanying glass stirrer by Josef Albers embodies the simplicity of form and material that characterised progressive design thinking at the Bauhaus in the mid-1920s. Designed with practicality, restraint and functional elegance in mind, the work reflects Albers’ engagement with material research during his time as a student and teacher at the Bauhaus. Conceived as products for future industrial mass production, the objects are now understood as workshop-based designs, as they survive only in limited numbers or as prototypes. This tea glass was conceived from the ground up. It presents a transparent liquid in a transparent vessel with a transparent stirring implement. For ease of handling, two wooden discs were attached vertically and horizontally to a steel clip, which can be removed to clean the glass. The fragile stirring blade was conceived less as a sugar spoon than as an implement used exclusively to allow the liquid to cool. This small vessel is a paradigmatic example of the ingenuity of Bauhaus teacher Josef Albers and of the Bauhaus’s endeavour to combine artistic design with functionality. Another example with a porcelain saucer is held by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, obj. no. 126.1957.1-2. Literature Cf. Weber and Bauhaus-Archiv, Die Metallwerkstatt am Bauhaus, exh. cat., Museum für Gestaltung, Berlin, 1992, p. 130.