A Bauhaus nickel silver teapot, model MT 49 / ME8
Semi-spherical vessel on cross shaped base. With tapering spout and semi-spherical handle of ebonised wood. The circular top with an asymmetrically placed opening and circular cover with small cylindrical wooden finial. H 8; W 15.8; D 10 cm.
Unmarked, Weimar Bauhaus, Marianne Brandt, 1924.
After studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Weimar and then training as a sculptor, Marianne Brandt joined the metal workshop of the still young Bauhaus in 1924 and soon made a name for herself with her designs of prototypes for jugs, vessels and lamps, all of which were based on Walter Gropius' slogan "Art and technology - a new unity" from 1923. Her teacher Laszlo Moholy-Nagy praised her in a recommendation as "my most brilliant student".
Her MT49/ME8 infusion teapot, created in 1924, was one of the first works that Marianne Brandt designed right at the beginning of her training at the Bauhaus. Today, it is one of the icons of the Bauhaus movement, even though the design never went into serial production, unlike the famous cantilever chairs by Marcel Breuer or the lamps of Wilhelm Wagenfeld.
The seven versions known to date are all in major international collections, such as The Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, New York, The British Museum, London, and the Klassik Stiftung Weimar. A teapot auctioned by Lempertz in 1996 is now on display at the Kamm Teapot Foundation in Los Angeles.
All seven prototypes were presented together for the first time in 2019 as part of the "Original Bauhaus" anniversary exhibition at the Berlinische Galerie.
Now, this small circle has been joined by a eighth piece, which comes to us with an interesting and complete provenance: Marianne Brandt gave the teapot to a close friend in Chemnitz (then Karl-Marx-Stadt) in the 1970s, in whose family it has remained to this day. The correspondence between the two women has survived and is preserved in the Berlin Bauhaus Archive.
Marianne Brandt apparently experimented with different materials for this design. In addition to two versions in silver, we know of versions in tombac and brass, for example. The jug in the collection of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg, which we were able to compare with ours, is made of bronze with a nickel silver spout. An examination of our version at the Cologne Institute of Conservation Sciences, CICS, revealed the presence of copper, zinc and nickel in all parts, so it was made entirely of nickel silver.
This lot is subject to follow-up rights according to # 9 of our auction conditions.
Provenance
From the estate of Marianne Brandt; 1975 gift to a friend from Chemnitz; since then in the possession of the same family.
Literature
For more on Marianne Brandt see cat. Die Metallwerkstatt am Bauhaus, Berlin 1992, p. 138 ff., for this teapot see ibid. fig. 36 f. Cf. also cat. original bauhaus, Berlin 2019, p. 30 ff.