Silber800.de – Bruckmann & Söhne: Designers

Peter Bruckmann (1865-1937) was the first chairman of the Deutscher Werkbund (founded 1907) and the Bruckmann firm produced many pieces by leading German designers.

"Other ways in which designers become involved depended on enlightened manufacturers inviting them, government sponsorship (I speak of Germany or France here, unheard of in the UK to this day), or approaches from designers themselves. How much control does the designer have? And then once the product is there, how is it marketed? Is the designers name a selling point or not? And how different is a factory made piece from one made by an individual craftsman? Joppien has rightly noted that in the case of the extraordinary coffee and tea service designed by Fritz Schmoll von Eisenwerth for Bruckmann in 1913, with its richly decorated surface and its ebony handles studded with silver nails, it is hard to believe that it is factory made at all."

"Bruckmann always used both internal and outside designers - I would like to know why, and whether the products of one have been more successful than the other, both from a commercial and critical point of view. In the late 1920s Die Form illustrated the designs for Paula Strauss for Bruckmann and noted the importance of a large firm introducing a modern attitude in an area where customers still followed old ideas. So with people like Strauss involved, what was the role of the internal artists?"

Hans Christiansen was a painter, graphic artist, Arts & Crafts designer and arts utensils and beyond that writer.

His training began with an apprenticeship as a decorative painter, and then he was in Hamburg in a business for interior decoration. This was followed by study at the School of Decorative Arts in Munich. In 1889 Christiansen returned to Hamburg and took a teaching job as a specialist teacher and also worked as a self-employed decorative painter. From 1895-99, after he had given up his Hamburg business, he spent a few years in Antwerp and Paris at the Académie Julien. In these years Christiansen began to be increasingly interested in the Arts and Crafts movement.

In 1897 he drew jewellery illustrations for the newly published magazine Munich "Jugend". At the request of the Darmstädter publisher Alexander Koch, in 1898 Christiansen participated in the "Darmstädter Arts and Crafts Exhibition"; in the same year he canvassed the Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig personally as a member of the Darmstadt Artists Colony. At the World Exhibition in Paris in 1900, Christiansen was in the "Darmstadt Room" with glass windows, jewelry, leather-work and working principles.

As part of the Artists Colony, in 1901 Christiansen, along with Joseph Maria Olbrich, designed his house "In Rosen", for which he also completed the interior decoration design. Due to discrepancies Christiansen left the Colony in 1902, but remained in Darmstadt. His design work in the field of Arts now increasingly focused on Textile art. Christiansen increasingly turned to painting again. After the sale of his house at Mathildenhöhein in 1912, he moved to Wiesbaden, where he almost exclusively devoted himself to painting and philosophical writings.

Richard Riemerschmid, who was an interior decorator, furniture designer, and architect, was a leading exponent of German Jugendstil. A co-founder of the Deutscher Werkbund and other similar associations, Richard Riemerschmid exerted a formative influence on German living and lifestyle in the early decades of the 20th century. Richard Riemerschmid attended the Munich Art Academy until 1890 before working as a freelance painter. He wrote for the periodical "Jugend".

In 1898 Richard Riemerschmid was a co-founder of the Vereinigte Werkstätten für Kunst im Handwerk in Munich. By then Richard Riemerschmid was designing his first interiors, including the music salon for the 1899 art exhibition in Dresden. In 1902 Richard Riemerschmid was one of the founders of the Garden City Associationan.

In 1907 Riemerschmid joined Peter Behrens, Peter Bruckmann, Josef Maria Olbrich, Fritz Schumacher, and Hermann Muthesius in founding the Deutscher Werkbund. From 1907 until 1913, Richard Riemerschmid was head architect of the first German garden city, in Dresden-Hellerau. From 1909 Riemerschmid was also involved in building a garden city in Nuremberg 1909. In 1913 Richard Riemerschmid was appointed director of the Kunstgewerbeschule in Munich; from 1925 until 1931 he was director of the Cologne Werkschulen. In 1900/01 Richard Riemerschmid built the Schauspielhaus Theatre in Munich as well as the "Deutsche Stunde in Bayern" radio building (1927). In 1928 Richard Riemerschmid built the pavilion for the Reckendorf publishing house at the "Pressa" trade fair in Cologne.

The goldsmith and craftsman Karl Gross studied from 1885-88 at the Munich College of Arts and Crafts, and until 1896 was active as an assistant in the goldsmithing workshop of Fritz von Miller. In 1898 he was appointed a Professor at the Arts and Crafts School in Dresden; from 1899 he was a constact exhibitor at the Dresden Art Exhibitions.

In 1908 he became Professor of Architectural Sculpture at the Dresden Arts and Crafts School; from 1914 he was Director of the School. Among his major works are included the Dresden Council Silver.

The sculptor and designer for the metal industry Amberg Adolf studied at the teaching institute of the Arts and Crafts Museum Berlin, then at the Académie Julian, and then at the Academy Berlin, where he was a master student of Louis Tuaillon.

1894-1904, he was a sculptor and modeler at P. Bruckmann & Sons in Heilbronn. In collaboration with the sculptor Otto Rieth he designed the large silver fountain "The German music", which was shown at the 1900 Paris World Exhibition.

After his 1903 draft was the Aachener Council designed silver. In addition to the 1904-5 and 1908-10 designed and purchased by the KPM Berlin ausgeformten models for the "Hochzeitszug" Amberg delivered in the anniversary year of 1913 CPMS the draft to a statue of Kaiser Wilhelm II on horseback.

Adler studied in Munich with Hermann Obrist and Wilhelm von Debschitz in 1904-1907.

Between 1910 and 1913 he worked as designer and applied arts artist for different companies, such as: the Silberwarenfabrik P. Bruckmann & Söhne in Heilbronn, the Metallwarenfabrik für Kleinkunst "Osiris" of Walter Scherf and for the Kunstgewerbliche Metallwarenfabrik "Orion" owned by G. F. Schmitt in Nürnberg. He died in the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1942.

The goldsmith Paula Straus, a member of the Deutscher Werkbund, is one of Germany's most important gold- and silversmiths of the Twenties and Thirties. She was one of Paul Haustein's masterclass pupils at the School of Applied Art in Stuttgart, where she studied until 1921.

From 1924/5 she worked as a designer for the silver manufacturers P. Bruckmann & Sons in Heilbronn. In 1929 she obtained a teaching position at the State High School for handicrafts and Architecture in Weimar. In 1935 she moved to Stuttgart, where she opened a jewelry shop that she was forced to give up in 1939. Her attempts to leave the country failed, there were enforced sales of her estate property. She found work as kitchen aid at the Jewish retirement home of Buttenhausen/Muensingen and in 1941 became manager of the Jewish retirement home at Haigerloh. In 1942 she was deported to Theresienstadt, in 1943 murdered at Auschwitz.