Tea-Infuser, Model No. MT 49

Reduction to a vocabulary of elementary forms is a basic feature of Bauhaus products. One of the standard exercises at the Bauhaus metal workshop was constructing a vessel out of a cylinder, sphere or cone. Laszlo Moholy-Nagy taught the basic course of primary form in the summer of 1923, and Marianne Brandt was among his first students. Moholy-Nagy also became master of form of the metal workshop, while the silversmith Christian Dell served as the master of craft (fig. 1).
Without any doubt there was a formal influence of Moholy's own artistic works on his students. His linocut compositions from 1924 include elements such as crosses and circle segments arranged and balanced on a plane. Here, we meet all the formal components of the 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 the components being propagated as 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. Marianne Brandt herself wrote that "we were crazy about simple forms,
because we were so much closer to the kitsch of historicism then."
The tea infuser was widely praised for its simplicity of form and practicality of construction. Especially singled out for remark were the push-on lid (away from the spout, so that it did not drip, unlike the usual hinged lids on metal teapots), the wood knob and handle (which were heat-resistant) and the non-drip spout. "The purpose of this small teapot is to keep a single cup of tea infusion, to be thinned down with hot water" (Die Schaulade, July 1926, p. 222).
The evolution of the tea infuser, as seen in the remarkable differences between the earliest example as seen in Fig. 1 and lot 90, is quite simple. At first there was form, then followed function. Marianne Brandt started with an artistic idea, and finally succeeded to create a fascinating and usable design, combining a certain naivete with utmost radicality.
Excerpted from Klaus Weber's lecture at the Modern Art of Metalwork, International Symposium: Functionalism? Formalism? Questioning Marianne Brandt's Tea-infuser. For the full text, see the metalwork link at www.broehan-museum.de.

There always had 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. However, the infuser definitely is a work of handcraft, to be produced by a trained silversmith. At present, seven versions are known to exist, and each one slightly varies. A bronze example in the Weimar Museum has a wooden handle, which is similar to the others but has a deep oval hollow cut-out for a better grip. The Nurnberg example in Tombac (fig. 4) has a hand-raised half-sphere body because there were no machines for spinning in the metal workshop at this time, (ca. 1925). The Bauhaus-Archiv example in brass (fig. 3) has a hammered hand-made finish unlike our example, which has been produced using a lathe, and thus is more refined, "finished" production. The feet on all examples are made of three separate parts that 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. Our example in Tombac has a more refined solution to the lid which sits in the bowl with three flanges securing the lid. Our example also has a machined look to the handle, perhaps suggesting it to be the closest to an industry-ready model.
The three other known versions of this model are as follows: two executed in silver (one in the collection of the British Museum, the other the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (as seen in Fig. 2) and one in nickeled-silver ("Alte Kunst, Kunstgewerbe," Lempertz Auction 734, November 21-22, 1986, p. 90, lot 364).

Tombac, ebony handle, the inside silver-plated, with silver strainer
produced in the metal workshop, Bauhaus Dessau
3 1/8 in. (7.8 cm) high
6 in. (15.1 cm) wide
4 in. (10.1 cm) diameter

Provenance:
Estate of Hajo Rose
Private collection

Literature:
Klaus Weber, DIE METALLWERKSTATT AM BAUHAUS, exh. cat., Bauhaus-Archiv Museum fur Gestaltung, Berlin, 1992, p. 111 and pp. 140-141, cat. nos. 36 and 37 (for comparison)
Judy Rudoe, DECORATIVE ARTS 1850-1950, A CATALOGUE OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM COLLECTION, London, 1991, pp. 21-22, cat. no. 26, pls. 131 and XV (for comparison)
Hans Brockhage and Reinhold Lindner, eds., MARIANNE BRANDT, Chemnitz, 2001, pp. 14-15