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  Christian Dell / Bauhaus “Tee-Ei” Tea infusers (Rare set of eight) 1924

  CHRISTIAN DELL (1893-1974)  Germany
  BAUHAUS  (1919-1933) Germany

  “Tee-Ei”  (tea ball) 1924 (rare set of 8)

  Silvered brass.

  ***These are all in fine original, untouched condition.

  Illustrated: Christian Dell: Silberschmied und Leuchtengestalter im 20. Jahrhundert, Beate Alice Hofmann, Museum Hanau (Hanau: Heller Druck,1996) illus. 15, p.56; Modernist Design 1880-1940, Alastair Duncan, The Norwest Collection (Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Antique Collectors’ Club, 1998), p. 173; Decorative Arts 1850-1950, Judy Rudoe, (London: British Museum Press, 1991) cover,  p. 276; Die Metall Werkstatt am Bauhaus, (Berlin: Bauhaus-Archiv, Museum für Gestaltung, 1992) pp. 140-141 Silver of a New Era,  (Rotterdam: Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, 1992)  p. 157;  cat. no. 140.

  Length: 5 1/4″

  Price: $9,600

  Christian Dell, metal artist and industrial designer, played a formative role in shaping the Bauhaus style. Dell was the master of the metal workshop at the Bauhaus, 1922-25, in Weimar, working closely with László Moholy-Nagy.

  Born the son of a locksmith in Offenbach in 1893, he had a great impact as a teacher on the curriculum of the Weimar metal workshop. He had done an apprenticeship as a silversmith in Hanau before and had also attended the drawing academy, followed by a stay at the Weimar School of Applied Art. Henry van de Velde, director of this institution, coined Christian Dell’s early works with his organic-flowing use of forms, a feature that can also be observed on Dell’s later works.

  Metal workshop at the Bauhaus in Weimar:
  From 1922, the former goldsmith, silversmith and coppersmith workshops of the Weimar phase became a laboratory for design where metal vessels and lamps were made. This is also where the designs for industry, as well as metal furniture, were ultimately created. In 1922, the silversmith Christian Dell took over as master of works. Following Itten’s departure in 1923, the workshop developed in a new direction with the Hungarian Constructivist László Moholy-Nagy. Instead of individual pieces, prototypes were now made for mass production. In order to manufacture the individual models, a production line was established.

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  Norman Bel Geddes Art Deco Streamline Medal 25th anniversary of GM 1933

  NORMAN BEL GEDDES (1893 – 1958) USA

  Medal 1933 (Commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of General Motors)

  Silvered bronze

  Signed: Norman Bel Geddes [copyright mark ] 1933

  Exhibited: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, May 16-Jan. 7, 2001, Mint Museum of Craft & Design, North Carolina, May 3-July 28, 2002

  Illustrated: Johnson, J. Stewart, American Modern 1925-1940: Design for a New Age, Harry N. Abrams & The American Federation of the Arts, 2000, p. 127

  Diameter:   3″

  This medallion, commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of General Motors, is an example of the Streamlined style that dominated architecture and design in America from the late 1920s to the end of the 1930s. With its abstracted, teardrop-shaped vehicle form depicted in motion, with the tall winglike element rising from its center, the overall effect is one of speed and movement—characteristic of the Streamlined style and appropriate to the automobile and airplane age. Norman Bel Geddes was trained as a theatrical set designer but best known for another project for General Motors, the Futurama exhibition at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. This exhibit, through which visitors were propelled on a giant conveyor belt, depicted a utopian vision of America in the near future, a world dependent on the speed and efficiency of the automobile for work and recreation.