iF celebrates 100 Years of Bauhaus
Teatime with Walter Gropius: TAC 1 by Rosenthal honored by iF in 1970
2019 was the year of the Bauhaus – the worldwide most influential school of art, design and ideas celebrated its centenary. We celebrate this avant-garde movement by starting a special design dedicated Bauhaus expert series. What links Bauhaus Icons to iF? As a highlight, we will take you on a journey deep into our iF archives to find traces and names of the Bauhaus. Our first encounter is no other than Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius (1883-1969) himself – and a Teapot by German Porcelain manufacturer Rosenthal.
Architect and Avant-garde master of modernism, Walter Gropius inspired and sculpted the whole idea, aesthetics and of the Bauhaus. He attracted other architects, artists and designers for his new school in Weimar (1919), later in Dessau, which ideology and key elements outlast time and still influence our aesthetic perception every day!
We at iF are very proud to have one of his designs in the iF Design Excellence: In 1970 he sketched a teapot series TAC 1 by Rosenthal in the discipline “product”.
One year after Gropius' death,
Rosenthal submitted his design for the TAC 1 Teapot, which was honored with an if DESIGN AWARD 1970. The teapot distinguishes itself through Gropius’ typically simple geometrical forms that certainly carry out his significant architectural Bauhaus handwriting. This becomes clear by freely implying the iconic circle and ball as defining elements and Bauhaus symbols for the series design. Typically for Gropius, the teapot´s form follows the teapot’s corpus in every detail.
