- The history of the Bauhaus pottery and ceramic workshop
only lasted five years, but, during this short time,
a new form and aesthetic for ceramics
and pottery was developed.
This new approach to ceramics,
breaking from rigid tradition,
was an enormous influence on the development
of 20th and now 21st century ceramics.
In 1920, the Bauhaus hired Max Krehan
to start a pottery workshop.
Krehan's initial class consisted of five students
who worked at his studio, about 30 kilometers
away from the school in Weimar.
Unlike the other workshops that were often interdependent,
the ceramic students were self-sufficient.
This was due to the physical separation from the school
and the nature of the craft,
which has a tradition of self-sufficiency.
Krehan taught the principles of pottery,
throwing on the potter's wheel glazing and firing kilns.
Gerhard Marcks taught the history of ceramics
and encouraged experimental ceramic design.
Walter Gropius' belief that machine-made mass production
was critical extended to ceramic production.
Marcks resisted this and believed that the Bauhaus
should be an educational institution, and not a factory.
Gropius' ideas prevailed,
and the Bauhaus pottery studio provided designs
for mass production of ceramic containers.
Gropius himself works with ceramics.
A good example of his work is immortalized
in Gropius' tea service, designed after he left the Bauhaus
and still being manufactured by Rosenthal today.
Marguerite Wildenhain was a ceramic artist,
teacher and author.
Her teapot, created for the Royal Porcelain Factory,
in Berlin, reflects a new age in ceramic production
that adapted to industrial manufacturing
and a simpler, less decorative style.
Form and function are evident,
with an angled spout that pours easily without dripping.
The large handle facilitates easy pouring
and the countersunk lid does not fall out when tilted.
When the National Socialism came to power in 1933,
Wildenhain was forced to leave the Bauhaus
because of her Jewish ancestry.
She moved, with her husband, to the Netherlands,
where the couple established a pottery shop
called Little Jug.
In the advance of the Nazi invasion,
Wildenhain left Holland in 1940
and emigrated to the United States,
but her husband's immigration request was denied.
After gaining US citizenship in 1945,
Wildenhain was able to fund and to sponsor
the immigration of her husband,
who, in the years of their separation,
had been drafted into the German Army.
In the United States, Wildenhain taught at Pond Farm
and wrote three of pottery's most influential books.
Artist Robert Arneson described her as
"The grande dame of potters."
Bauhaus designers working with pottery
and ceramics hoped to reshape the broken society,
using industrial tools, new technology and design.
Although the Nazis destroyed their movement,
their ideas, clarity and processes
found a vital home in post-war consumer-based America.