Female silversmiths in the Bauhaus era

The work of a silversmith demands strength, technical finesse and imaginative design. After 1900, more and more women took up the trade of the silversmith. They successfully asserted themselves against male competitors and battled preconceived notions, and some were able to make a living for themselves through their work. This was a small-scale revolution amid the days of the artistic and social transitions at the turn of the century: some of these women went on to become widely honoured pioneers of the modern age in their field. “Silver from a woman's hands: Paula Straus, Emmy Roth and their peers. Female silversmiths in the Bauhaus era” is the title of the new special exhibition which is being held at the Badisches Landesmuseum Karlsruhe (Museum beim Markt). It features the lives and works of 15 major craftswomen from Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The exhibition contains over 180 objects on display for the first time in Karlsruhe, many of which come from private holdings. In conjunction with the companion guide, this exhibition addresses a gap that to date has been left unaddressed in the history of 20th century artisanry and design.

From 1925 onward, Stuttgart native Paula Straus (1894-1943) worked in the studio of a silver factory where she designed models for over 100 coffee and tea sets, candlesticks, boxes, vases, toiletry sets and cutlery, which was also serially manufactured. She can thus be considered the first and most successful modern designer. Straus also specialised in making jewellery. Her career met an end through the national socialist regime: as a Jew, she was forbidden to work in 1939, transported to Theresienstadt in 1942 and died in Auschwitz in 1943.

Emmy Roth (1885-1942), the second protagonist of the title, appeared on the scene in Berlin in 1925 with spirited silver pieces full of character. Her works included modern coffee and tea sets, vases, lamps as well as boxes and candlesticks. As a German of Jewish heritage, from 1933 on she lived in exile in France, the Netherlands and Israel before taking her own life in Tel Aviv in 1942. Roth's one-of-a-kind works were known and acclaimed around the world, and today the majority of them are privately owned: they were often commissioned pieces, and only a few museums purchased the respected product designer's works during her lifetime.

The biographies of the 13 other women in the exhibition are striking as well. Some of the artists remained unmarried so they could pursue their professions and build a career for themselves, while others – including Eva Mascher and Hildegard Risch, Gemma Wolters-Thiersch and Erika Petersen – founded studios and attempted to live off their work. Their common artistic creed was that of the “objective form,” which was to free their silver craft from the ornamentation of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Each of these silversmiths was successful in establishing her own style, despite the common denominator they shared of pursuing an objective design. Their work expressively articulated the spirit and attitude as well as the distinctive technique of each craftswoman, making her pieces unmistakable. The most significant works in terms of cultural and ideological history are privately-owned objects made by enamel artist Gemma Wolters-Thiersch (1907-1994), who travelled in the circles of influential poet Stefan George and crafted a laurel wreath of gold for him in 1928. She also made a silver cup decorated with enamel depictions of mythological figures (1935); it is said to have been used at private readings of George's work.