I have chosen these three frames to look through because in the world the teapot was designed in, they were inextricably linked.
Between 1923 and 1924, around the same time he became business director of the Bauhaus pottery, Theodor Bogler designed the Combination teapot. The Combination Teapot (also called the Modular teapot) is a design for four variations of a teapot, all assembled from the same 6 individual parts. The examples in the V&A are the original hand thrown and altered, however the design was meant for industrial mass moulding – encompassing the Bauhaus philosophy that objects should be beautiful, well designed but affordable. Bogler designed the teapot during the period when Walter Gropius, the founder and leader of Bauhaus, decided that his students should design for industry. Anna Rowland explains this in her journal article; Business Management at the Weimar Bauhaus;
“Gropius realised that the very survival of the school depended on making contact with the external world (das Werkleben), and in particular, finding industrial manufacturers for the models developed in the workshops. The more money the school could earn through the sale of its workshop products, the less dependent it had to be on funding from the Thuringian government, and therefore upon government policy.”
So, in an effort to divorce himself from the increasingly conservative government and the financial ruin sweeping the country, Gropius began to transform his school into a business. In theory the opportunity for students to design for industry was a fantastic one, linking manufacturers with innovative young designers, with new ideas about the structure of materialism could be viewed as largely positive. However, the men charged with overseeing this effort had little positive to say;
“The strains of the Syndikus’s job were enormous, and in Spring 1924 Lange resigned. As he did so, he complained that it was an impossible task to administrate an educational institution as a profit-making concern.”
Like Gropius’s plan, Bogler’s teapot was innovative in theory but failed in practice, the Combination Teapot was never actually approved for industry, it is a symbol of commercial failure. Both were thought up in a time of great political and sociological change, in Germany and the wider world.
The idea of an “educational institution as a profit-making concern.” is increasingly familiar, especially to anyone currently studying in the UK, what is startling is the differences in motivations between universities now and the Bauhaus in 1924. What would Walter Gropius think of students over 19 paying for a Foundation course? How different their solutions to saving a sinking ship are…
When does art flourish, in times of hardship or prosperity? And how can one define flourishing? I believe innovation can be a natural response to hardship but it doesn’t necessarily mean anyone is flourishing. This teapot, for example, was produced at a time when there was (according to Anna Rowland) “not a single motorized wheel” at Bauhaus and “For lack of a press to prepare the clay by expelling impurities, entire firings were frequently ruined. The pottery workshop also badly needed a Giesserei (mould-maker) so that moulds could be made. However, the press alone cost 2,000 Marks.” Interesting that Bogler managed to cast his teapot, in an environment where expertise was apparently scarce. The financial strain, caused by lack of funding from the Thungurian government, also lead Gropius to request credit from the Staatsbank, the state bank of east Germany, showing them some industrial prototypes to strengthen their case, I wonder who judged them, and how. Bankers looking at pots.
Bogler’s design was informed by the industrial process, in fact it was created in an effort to successfully utilize it. Perhaps naively, Bogler used plaster in a way that worked in the confines of the workshop but not in the factory. Rowland goes on to conclude that the philosophy of Bauhaus, to design everyday goods for everyday people, only became a possibility when designers in the workshops collaborated with industry, instead of dictating to it. Bogler did not, to anyone’s knowledge, collaborate with industry, this is possibly why it failed commercially.
I can’t find any fired examples of the first (dare I say more traditional) teapot, only the plaster example. It’s rather more dumpy, what you would expect to be mass produced, not sleek and modernist like the more popular third and fourth option, which are the most common and it seems popular. When only two really remain in the mainstream, it is easy to forget their siblings.
What I find so interesting about Bogler’s design for the teapot is not just its form and interesting approach to production, but its place in time. It is unwittingly a representative of a seminal moment in history, I can’t help but imbed it with the events of the early 20s in Germany, specifically the Weimar Republic.
Unlike the French who used income tax, the German emperor funded the first world war by borrowing, this meant that, before the end of the war, the country was already deep in the pit of debt and financial hardship it would eventually sink into. The Weimar Republic was further bankrupted by the reparations ordered in the Treaty of Versailles, when these were not paid in full the allied troops occupied the industrial Ruhr valley. Subsequently the German workers were ordered on strike by the Weimar Republic, however in order to pay them the government just printed more money, triggering the hyperinflation that left Germany in ruins. And where was Bauhaus? Smack bang in the middle of the city of Weimar.
What is really important is how this effected Bogler’s design, I suppose like many Germans after the first world war and indeed many designers, he had quite specific ideas about what should fill people’s homes and how they should be made. What is most interesting about this specific design is that it is utilitarian in both form and process of manufacture, designing this allowed Bogler to really pinpoint what he thought necessary in a teapot and cut down on any excess. As Dieter Rams famously said; “Good design is as little design as possible”. But does Bogler truly pass Rams’ test? Was it all just a little bit too complicated?
I know very little about the personal political persuasion of Theodor Bogler, only that he eventually became a monk and then a priest. What matters is that the politics of the time directly affected the economy and the economic problems of the Weimar republic were partly responsible for the dissolution of the Weimar Bauhaus and the decline in standards. Bogler was designing in a time dominated by financial hardship and the rise of fascism, his teapot, in my opinion, is unique because it is famous as a piece of design but not for its process. It is visually and not theoretically known, despite its entirely theoretical origins.
Bogler apparently continued to make pots when he was a monk, and collaborated with some ceramic workshops, perhaps he learned from the mistakes of the early Bauhaus. The teapot above was in Bogler’s possession until he died. He left it and some other pieces to the son of a close friend, who apparently used them for years, totally unaware of their value or importance. I almost think that’s better, to be used, as a functional, utilitarian object and not locked away in a cabinet, becoming a symbol of itself.