Glass Tea Service, designed by Wilhelm Wagenfeld (1930-1934)
Description:
"Wagenfeld's lifelong dedication to the modern movement and its ideals of functionalism, simplicity and mass production are evident in this tea service first produced in the early '30s. Its clarity and purity convey a timeless quality, which no doubt accounts for its continued production. Brought to the Jenaer Glaswerk by its principal, Erich Schott, Wagenfeld was commissioned to design heat-resistant glass products such as this tea service. It was his first design for the firm, and included a teapot in three different sizes with a central diffuser to strain the tea. Wagenfeld preferred not to promote the service under his name believing that industrial design is the expression of collective design and execution. It remains one of the purest expressions of Wagenfeld's industrial aesthetic in which every aspect of the relationship between form and function is figuratively and literally transparent."1
Image Credit: : The Modernism Collection, gift of Norwest Bank Minnesota (http://www.artsMIA.org).