German 1923 Bauhaus Geometric Enamel And Guilloche Pill Box In 925 Sterling Silver

German geometric enameled pill box attributed to Herbert Bayer.

An exceptional representative piece of the Bauhaus art movement. This box has been made in Germany during the art deco period, back in the 1923. Crafted in an squared shape with chamfer corners in solid .935/.999 sterling silver. The reverse is treated with engine turned guilloche design, topped with white translucent hot enamel.

The top lid is embellished with a gorgeous art deco geometric composition, with applications of red, black, gray and white enamel. It is fitted with three barrels hinge and a thumb snap push. The interiors are treated with more engine turned guilloche and blue enamel.

The Bauhaus School Of Design

The Bauhaus, titled after a German phrase that means “house of construction,” was created in 1919 by architect Walter Gropius in Weimar, Germany. He took over a pre-existing school of Arts and Crafts in 1915, and the revolutionary new Bauhaus art school was founded four years later via the merging of this establishment with the Weimar Academy of Fine Art. The Bauhaus style was inspired by 19th and early 20th-century creative tendencies including the Art Nouveau style and the various foreign versions like the Vienna Secession and Jugendstil, as well as the Arts and Crafts movement. All of these groups desired to blur the line between the applied and fine arts, as well as to reconnect imagination and fabrication; their heritage was represented in the romantic medievalism of the Bauhaus movement ideology during its formative days when it styled itself as some kind of craftsmen’s union. By the mid-1920s, however, this ideal had given place to a focus on integrating industrial Bauhaus graphic design and art, and it was this focus that anchored the Bauhaus’ most innovative and significant achievements. Simultaneously, the 1910s rise of Russian Constructivism provided a more urgent and aesthetically appropriate predecessor for the Bauhaus’ fusion of artistic and mechanical design. When the Bauhaus officially opened in 1920, it took up home in the old sculpture workshop of the Grand-Ducal Saxon institute, constructed in the Art Nouveau fashion. The school’s strategy was centered on its innovative and impactful curriculum. Gropius described it as a wheel with rings, with the outer circle chosen to represent the six-month preparatory course launched by Johannes Itten that focused on the foundational facets of design, particularly the differing characteristics of varied shapes, colors, and substances. (Arts In Context with thanks)

Weight: 40.60 Grams, (26.03 Dwt).

Measurements: 52 mm by 52 mm by 15 mm (2.05 x 2.05 x 0.59 Inches).

Hallmarks: Stamped with the maker's mark, the mark for the assay of the silver and signed, "STERLING GERMANY".

Herbert Bayer

Herbert Bayer Bauhaus Exhibition Poster, 1923

Bayer apprenticed under the artist Georg Schmidt Hammer in Linz. Leaving the workshop to study at the Darmstadt Artists' Colony, he became interested in Walter Gropius's Bauhaus manifesto. After Bayer had studied for four years at the Bauhaus under such teachers as Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee[2] and László Moholy-Nagy, Gropius appointed Bayer director of printing and advertising. In the spirit of reductive minimalism, Bayer developed a crisp visual style and adopted use of all-lowercase, sans serif typefaces for most Bauhaus publications. Bayer is one of several typographers of the period including Kurt Schwitters and Jan Tschichold who experimented with the creation of a simplified more phonetic-based alphabet. From 1925 to 1930 Bayer designed a geometric sans-serif Proposal for a Universal Typeface Herbert Bayer, universal that existed only as a design and was never actually cast into real type. These designs are now issued in digital form as Bayer Universal. P22 Type Foundry Bauhaus Set The design also inspired ITC Bauhaus and Architype Bayer, which bears comparison with the stylistically related typeface Architype Schwitters. In 1923 Bayer met the photographer Irene Bayer-Hecht at the first large Bauhaus exhibit in Weimar. They married in 1925, separated in 1928, had a daughter, Julia Alexandra, in 1929, and divorced in 1944.

The Bauhaus Movement

The Bauhaus style tends to feature simple geometric shapes like rectangles circles and spheres, without elaborate decorations. Buildings, furniture, jewelry and fonts often feature rounded corners and sometimes rounded walls. Other buildings or decorative pieces are characterized by rectangular features, for example protruding balconies with flat, chunky railings facing the street, and long banks of windows. furniture often uses chrome metal pipes that curve at corners.

Guilloché 

Is a term used in fine jewelry or objets de vertu to enhance the appearance of boxes, frames, brooches, rings or pendants. Guilloché enamel refers to metal pieces that have been given the Guilloché treatment and then covered with a translucent layer of enamel, giving the geometric patterns underneath the enamel a colorful hu

Collateral: It is accompanied by a presentation jewelry pouch.

Condition: The overall condition of this box is exceptional. Beside the little normal wear, there is no damage to the silver. All parts and the enamel are secured in the settings. This piece has been carefully inspected to guarantee the condition and authenticity.

INVENTORY REF: D071423AIMJ/1.203