Paula Straus Coffee and Tea Service

“I have a busy life behind me in a profession whose difficulties I overcame with perseverance and love, and which has given me so much joy that today I am grateful that I was allowed to do it, that I made the most of my time while I could.”[i] – Paula Straus in last known letter, July 1942.

The Jewish goldsmith and industrial designer Paula Straus died in a gas chamber at the Auschwitz concentration camp on February 10, 1943. She had just turned forty-nine a few months earlier. After her senseless murder, Straus was forgotten for decades. The Nazis had practically erased her from the history books. However, recent discoveries have brought Straus’s vast and incredibly important contributions back from oblivion.[ii] These findings reveal an artist who was professionally at the forefront of her field, creating work with “extreme sophistication” and “technical competence.”[iii] This excellence is present not only in Straus’s jewelry and holloware, but also in her flatware and elaborate ecclesiastical works. Fortunately, in recent years, Paula Straus is finally being recognized as one of Germany’s first female industrial designers, but without a doubt, she deserves greater recognition for “[helping] shape the style-defining Bauhaus era and the particularly creative heyday of the Weimar Republic.”[iv]

PIONEER

Traditionally silversmithing and goldsmithing have been male-dominated professions. Relatively few women were allowed to study the craft. However, at the beginning of the twentieth century, things were beginning to change, especially at some more progressive art schools in Germany. Certainly, it was still unusual for a woman to pursue this path, but Straus did not seem to be deterred by the confines of convention. She began her studies in metal in Schwä­bisch Gmünd passing her journeyman’s examination around 1916.[v] Straus then worked as an assistant in a gold and silversmith shop in Frankfurt for three years.[vi] In 1919, she returned to Stuttgart to train to become a master goldsmith under acclaimed professor Paul Haustein at the Württemberg State School of Arts and Crafts at Weissenhof.[vii]  Straus would complete her master goldsmith examination in 1921, one of only a few women to do so.

In 1925 Straus was asked to join the silver manufacturer Bruckmann & Sӧhne in Heilbronn, Germany.[viii] After a training period, she quickly adapted to making modern, “simple, elegant forms” that were suitable for manufacture. It should be noted this was happening “at a time when the Bauhaus…was still in an experimental phase.”[ix] For the next eight years, Straus created around one hundred designs for Bruckmann & Sӧhne. These objects ranged from bouillon cups, candlesticks, bowls, and boxes to cutlery and complete coffee and tea services.[x] Straus developed “models that, on the one hand, catered to the tastes of a traditional clientele, but on the other, were…open to the spirit of modernity.”[xi] In essence, these works reflected “…the tradition of craftsmanship, the trends of the time, and the inspiration from the new, prevailing tendencies…”[xii] At the 1929 World’s Fair in Barce­lona, Spain, Straus’s products, featured in the Bruckmann & Sӧhne booth, “caused a sensation.” [xiii] She was awarded the Grand Prix as well as a gold medal for her contributions. This would be a significant peak in Straus’s stunted career.

KAMM COLLECTION

The Kamm Collection has two examples of a Straus coffee and tea set. This Bruckmann & Sӧhne service, identified as Model No. 13024, was designed in August of 1926. It contains four pieces: a coffee pot, a teapot, a creamer, and a sugar bowl. Each vessel features clean lines, a slightly hammered surface, curved handles, s-shaped spouts, ivory accents and Bakelite insulator disks. The bodies of these forms are made of spun silver, but any applied elements were handcrafted by silversmiths. Straus’s design, which embraced simplicity and the object’s functionality, fully reflected the Deutscher Werkbund’s desire “to bridge the gap between artists and industry.” The Werkbund, of which Straus was a member, would ultimately lay the groundwork for the establishment of the Bauhaus.

Straus’s Model No. 13024 was exhibited in Leipzig, Germany at the 1927 European Arts and Crafts Exhibition and, the service frequently appeared in contemporary publications.[xiv] The reception to this coffee and tea set was overwhelmingly positive, and it seems that Straus had “delivered her masterpiece in industrial design.”[xv] In fact, many believed that this service truly “captured the spirit of the time.”[xvi] In the Deutscher Werkbund’s publication Die Form, its editor Wilhelm Lotz, exclaimed, “To our knowledge, this is the first logical attempt to create forms from the peculiarities of bench pressing that no longer resemble struck forms and do not attempt to replace or [look like] them. The silver must be stripped of this mystical veil, and where the machine masters its shape, it must do so honestly, in keeping with its nature.”[xvii]