The work of BAUHAUS student Marguerite Friedlaender catapulted KPM into the present – ​​and brought about a turning point in German porcelain history.

Over a hundred years ago, the Bauhaus revolutionized the design world. It countered the exuberant floral ornamentation of Art Nouveau with something new. People now designed in the style of New Objectivity and with functionality in mind - timeless, clear and straight-lined houses, furniture made of cool tubular steel, objects in primary colors. There was a creative spirit of optimism. This also applied to KPM, which was then called the State Porcelain Manufactory in Berlin. In 1929, its new director, Günther von Pechmann, took up his post as a visionary. The studied economist and member of the German Werkbund reorganized the product range of the traditional Berlin manufacturer under the slogan "Porcelain for the new home." The porcelain was to be combinable and thus fit in with the new architecture, the new style of furnishing and the new needs of modern kitchens.

The Berlin manufacturer was a pioneer in breaking new conceptual ground. Up until then, the German porcelain industry had hardly felt the spirit of optimism of the Bauhaus. The appearance of plates, cups and tea services remained traditional even in the 1920s. When it came to porcelain, people preferred to stick with the good old days. Tableware was a status symbol, and ornamental relief decorations and floral patterns set the tone almost without interruption.

Günther von Pechmann looked for a suitable partner for his planned modernization of the KPM. Immediately after taking office, he initiated a collaboration with Burg Giebichenstein in Halle, a school of applied arts where mainly former Bauhaus students taught - such as Marguerite Friedlaender.

The daughter of a Jewish-German silk manufacturer and an Englishwoman had completed her training at the state-run Bauhaus and then worked with Gerhard Marcks and Max Krehan in the associated ceramics workshop in Dornburg.

In 1925 she moved with Marcks to Burg Giebichenstein, where she took over the ceramics class, as the only woman in Germany at the time in such a position.

In 1929, the then 33-year-old was given the management of the newly founded Burg Porcelain Workshop, which was intended as an artistic experimental laboratory for industry. Crafts and art were to merge together – in the spirit of the Bauhaus – and

be mass-produced. At the same time, the cooperation with KPM began. Günther von Pechmann commissioned Marguerite Friedlaender to design modern and contemporary tableware. After just a few months, she presented the first designs of the pure white, unadorned HALLE'SCHE FORM coffee and mocha service. The cylindrical pot with a straight spout was particularly striking.

In just under two years, a tea service was added to the HALLE'SCHE FORM series, so delicate that the KPM trademark, the blue sceptre, shimmered through the bottom of the cup. This was followed by the "Burg Giebichenstein" dinner service, the "Hermes" restaurant crockery for Halle/Leipzig Airport and numerous vase series, including her HALLE vase - conical at the top, bulbous at the bottom. Friedlaender's "airplane cup" designs, in which the mirror surface is cut out in the bottom bowl so that the cup stands securely even in turbulence, were created in 1932 and were produced until 1935.

Friedlaender designed based on geometric shapes and straight lines. She put her models together like an architect. But she never denied her ceramic origins. Her designs do not appear constructed, but rather, as is usual with the turning technique, mounted.

Working closely with the KPM, Friedlaender modified her models and adapted them to the production conditions for serial production. Her work was groundbreaking for the entire German porcelain industry. Her work was praised in the Weimar Republic as the epitome of innovative, radically functional ceramics for everyday use.

But despite her success and work, the avant-gardist Friedlaender never achieved the level of fame of her colleague Trude Petri, who was simultaneously employed as a porcelain designer at KPM and, shortly after Friedlaender's "Hallescher Form", designed the URBINO tableware, which was also pure white and without decoration.

This may be due, among other things, to the fact that Petri's models in the style of New Objectivity were sometimes even more radical. Friedlaender also never sought publicity: "Publicity, fame and the limelight are as fleeting as clouds, but a good vessel will last for centuries," she wrote in her autobiography, published in 1973.

Friedlaender learned how quickly fame can fade in 1933. When the National Socialists came to power, her career as a porcelain designer in Germany came to an abrupt end. As a Jew, the mayor of Halle personally advised her to resign from her teaching position at Burg Giebichenstein. She went to the Netherlands with her husband, the ceramicist and Bauhaus student Franz Rudolf Wildenhain, and opened a small but successful pottery studio. In 1940, she emigrated to the USA alone. When she was invited by a board member of the Museum of Modern Art in New York shortly afterwards, the butler served tea in her own KPM service - something that no one knew except Friedlaender.

Friedlaender later moved to California, taught at colleges and joined an artists' colony that worked on a remote farm. When her husband followed her to the USA a few years later, the marriage quickly fell apart. And the artists' colony also fell apart a short time later. Friedlaender stayed alone on the farm, offering courses for young ceramicists there in the summer - and enjoyed the solitude the rest of the time.

She died in 1985 at the age of 89 - without fame or the limelight. But some of Friedlaender's designs for KPM, such as the HALLE vase series and her HALLE'SCHE FORM mocha service, have survived and are still being produced today.

This text first appeared by Sandra Winkler in our 2nd customer magazine WEISS. The latter image comes from the KPM archive.