Wilhelm Wagenfeld (1900-1990)

Wilhelm Wagenfeld was undeniably one of the pioneers of German industrial design. Like no other representative of his craft, he devoted his professionalism and inventive gifts to radically improving industrial mass production and to „redifining the weight of things“. Countless of his clear, functional designs proceeded to become classics of timeless beauty: the Bauhaus lamp, a standard to this day, which Wagenfeld created as a student of twenty-four at the Weimar Bauhaus; the stackable Kubus storage vessels of 1938; or the salt and pepper cruets which he designed in 1952 for WMF and which are still famed and sold for their handy shape and their invoking Germany’s archetype saucy twins – Max + Moritz. To mark the centenary of his birth, this amply illustrated book for the first time presents Wagenfeld’s oeuvre in the context of the works of important contemporaries, so to highlight the salient characteristics of his own and to evaluate them in comparison. The contributing authors shed light upon the designer’s output and its perception today from a range of very different perspectives. In so doing, they affirm the undiminished relevance of his designs and ideas. (German edition available ISBN 3-7757-0885-5) The designer: Wilhelm Wagenfeld (Bremen 1900-1990 Stuttgart). Studies at the Weimar Bauhaus from 1923-1925. In 1926, assistant at the metal workshop at the Hochschule for Handwerk und Baukunst in Weimar. Member of the Deutscher Werkbund in 1928. From 1931-35, professor at the Staatliche Kunsthochschule in Berlin. From 1931, numerous works for the glass manufacturer Schott & Gen., Jena. From 1935- 1947, artistic director of the Vereinigte Lausitzer Glaswerke glass factory at Weißwasser. From 1950, free-lance work for numerous firms (WMF, Lindner, Peill & Putzler, Rosenthal, Braun etc.). From 1954, Werkstatt Wagenfeld workshop. From 1958, publisher of the magazine „form“ with others.