teapots revealed
Sep. 29th, 2006 10:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lobelia321Thank you, everyone who did my teapot exercise a few days ago. I thought you'd be interested in knowing the 'right' answer and finding out when these pots were designed and by whom, and why I chose them. This was really helpful as a dry run for this seminar. It's the first time I'm teaching design, and I'm really a bit at sea. At least, having cut, pasted and img-src'ed these teapots so often, I now know them off by heart!!
Your own answers were even more interesting than the 'correct' sequence, as I discuss below the cut, *g*.
1) Photo F: John Chandler Moore, service, 1850.
Silver tea and coffee service, USA. Tray by james Dixon & Sons of Sheffield.
2) Photo D: Josef Hoffmann, tea service, c.1906
Style: Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshop)
3) Photo C: Peter Behrens, teakettle, 1909
Style: Deutscher Werkbund.
4) Photo G: Marianne Brandt, tea maker, 1928/30
Style: Bauhaus.
5) Photo B: Rosenthal, tea pot, c.1937
'Schönheit der Arbeit' (Beauty in Work). Style: National Socialist. (This is a Nazi teapot and has a swastika on its base.)
Detail of swastika on base:
6) Photo A: Harold Holdcroft, teapot, 1962
'Old Country Roses' teapot. Royal Albert (Royal Doulton). Style: Nostalgia/heritage.
7) Photo F: Robert Venturi, tea set, 1986
'Village' tea set. Style: Post-Modernism
Your answers were very interesting. Nobody got it 'right'. But that doesn't matter as much as what it reveals about everybody's assumptions about stylistic progression. Some people seemed to assume that the more ornate, the older something is, so they placed the two decorative, floral ones, the Moore and the Rosenthal, at the beginning (I deliberately put the Old Country Roses teapot in there, to confuse expectations that styles progress in a smooth, predictable fashion). Other people seemed to assume that simple shapes were older and placed the Nazi teapot at the beginning of the series. Others put the Bauhaus teapot together with the Nazi teapot, and yet others put the Bauhaus teapot as the most recent, as the most 'futuristic' looking, perhaps -- which goes to show that some design is either timeless or newly relevant.
Anyway, thank you everyone for participating! I will let you know how this exercise went in class. If it's half as interesting as you lot made it, I'll be happy. :-)
The reason I chose these:
1) The Chandler Moore one as an example of Victorian eclecticism and historicism (pseudo-Rococo) (although, strictly speaking, it's not Victorian but American), the kind of style that the later generations rejected.
2) The Hoffmann as an example of Vienne Workshop design (the topic of the students' seminar in 2 weeks' time) and of early modernist clean-ness of line. Hoffmann's chum, the architect Adolf Loos, coined the famous dictum: 'Ornament is crime.' So this is the anti-Chandler Moore style!
3) The Behrens is almost contemporaneous with the Hoffmann, and I just love it. Behrens designed this kettle in a variety of modules so that it was easy to mass-produce but at the same time give consumers 'choice'. So that you could order one of four basic shapes in one of four basic finishes.
4) The Brandt I chose as an example of Bauhaus because Bauhaus design is so classic and so famous and the students will be doing it in week 4. Also, it's the only teapot I have here designed by a woman so I wanted it in there.
5) The Rosenthal I chose because the students will be doing 1930s dictator design in week 5, and it confused the notion of easy stylistic progression, and also alerts us to the fact that design is embedded in a social and political context. You cannot tell by the style, necessarily, what kind of society produced a thing. But this teapot is also a reaction against the Bauhaus and Hoffmann types of modernism; it looks more 'traditional' but also 'simple', so not ornate and pseudo-aristocratic. A pot for the 'people'.
6) I chose the Old Country Roses again to confound notions of straightforward stylistic evolution (because history hops about, it doesn't zoom forwards in a straight line) and also as an example of nostalgia / heritage design. This design continues to be very popular today.
7) I chose this as an example of post-modern design (Venturi was also the first po-mo architect). He designed this house for his mum:
It was, in the 1960s, one of the first houses to incorporate classical elements but in a playful way. In this teaset, Venturi's playing around with mimesis and literal images.
Your own answers were even more interesting than the 'correct' sequence, as I discuss below the cut, *g*.
1) Photo F: John Chandler Moore, service, 1850.
Silver tea and coffee service, USA. Tray by james Dixon & Sons of Sheffield.
2) Photo D: Josef Hoffmann, tea service, c.1906
Style: Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshop)
3) Photo C: Peter Behrens, teakettle, 1909
Style: Deutscher Werkbund.
4) Photo G: Marianne Brandt, tea maker, 1928/30
Style: Bauhaus.
5) Photo B: Rosenthal, tea pot, c.1937
'Schönheit der Arbeit' (Beauty in Work). Style: National Socialist. (This is a Nazi teapot and has a swastika on its base.)
Detail of swastika on base:
6) Photo A: Harold Holdcroft, teapot, 1962
'Old Country Roses' teapot. Royal Albert (Royal Doulton). Style: Nostalgia/heritage.
7) Photo F: Robert Venturi, tea set, 1986
'Village' tea set. Style: Post-Modernism
Your answers were very interesting. Nobody got it 'right'. But that doesn't matter as much as what it reveals about everybody's assumptions about stylistic progression. Some people seemed to assume that the more ornate, the older something is, so they placed the two decorative, floral ones, the Moore and the Rosenthal, at the beginning (I deliberately put the Old Country Roses teapot in there, to confuse expectations that styles progress in a smooth, predictable fashion). Other people seemed to assume that simple shapes were older and placed the Nazi teapot at the beginning of the series. Others put the Bauhaus teapot together with the Nazi teapot, and yet others put the Bauhaus teapot as the most recent, as the most 'futuristic' looking, perhaps -- which goes to show that some design is either timeless or newly relevant.
Anyway, thank you everyone for participating! I will let you know how this exercise went in class. If it's half as interesting as you lot made it, I'll be happy. :-)
The reason I chose these:
1) The Chandler Moore one as an example of Victorian eclecticism and historicism (pseudo-Rococo) (although, strictly speaking, it's not Victorian but American), the kind of style that the later generations rejected.
2) The Hoffmann as an example of Vienne Workshop design (the topic of the students' seminar in 2 weeks' time) and of early modernist clean-ness of line. Hoffmann's chum, the architect Adolf Loos, coined the famous dictum: 'Ornament is crime.' So this is the anti-Chandler Moore style!
3) The Behrens is almost contemporaneous with the Hoffmann, and I just love it. Behrens designed this kettle in a variety of modules so that it was easy to mass-produce but at the same time give consumers 'choice'. So that you could order one of four basic shapes in one of four basic finishes.
4) The Brandt I chose as an example of Bauhaus because Bauhaus design is so classic and so famous and the students will be doing it in week 4. Also, it's the only teapot I have here designed by a woman so I wanted it in there.
5) The Rosenthal I chose because the students will be doing 1930s dictator design in week 5, and it confused the notion of easy stylistic progression, and also alerts us to the fact that design is embedded in a social and political context. You cannot tell by the style, necessarily, what kind of society produced a thing. But this teapot is also a reaction against the Bauhaus and Hoffmann types of modernism; it looks more 'traditional' but also 'simple', so not ornate and pseudo-aristocratic. A pot for the 'people'.
6) I chose the Old Country Roses again to confound notions of straightforward stylistic evolution (because history hops about, it doesn't zoom forwards in a straight line) and also as an example of nostalgia / heritage design. This design continues to be very popular today.
7) I chose this as an example of post-modern design (Venturi was also the first po-mo architect). He designed this house for his mum:
It was, in the 1960s, one of the first houses to incorporate classical elements but in a playful way. In this teaset, Venturi's playing around with mimesis and literal images.
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Date: 2006-09-29 10:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-01 09:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-01 10:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-02 09:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-09-30 12:50 am (UTC)Did you intend to include a link for Venturi's house?
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Date: 2006-10-01 09:45 pm (UTC)Yes, I put a link to Venturi's house. Is it not visible??
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Date: 2006-10-02 01:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-10-02 09:11 pm (UTC)