Lilly Reich
Encyclopedia
Lilly Reich was a German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 modernist designer
Designer
A designer is a person who designs. More formally, a designer is an agent that "specifies the structural properties of a design object". In practice, anyone who creates tangible or intangible objects, such as consumer products, processes, laws, games and graphics, is referred to as a...

. She was a close collaborator with Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was a German architect. He is commonly referred to and addressed as Mies, his surname....

 for over 10 years.

Biography

Lilly Reich was born in Berlin, Germany in the year 1885. In 1908 she put her embroidery training to use when she went to Vienna to work for the Wiener Werkstätte, or Vienna Workshop, a visual arts production company of designers, artists, and architects. She made it back home to Berlin by 1911. There she began to design furniture and clothing. She also worked as a shop window decorator at this time. The following year she joined the Deutscher Werkbund, or German Work Federation, a group similar to the Vienna Workshop whose purpose was to help improve competitiveness of German companies in the global market. That year she designed a sample working-class flat in the Berlin Gewerkschaftshaus, or Trade Union House. It received much praise for the clarity and functionalism of the furnishings. She contributed work to the Werkbund exhibition in Cologne in 1914. In 1920 Lilly became the first woman elected to the governing board of the Deutscher Werkbund. From 1924 to 1926 she worked at the Messeamt, or Trade Fair Office, in Frankfurt. Here, she was in charge of organizing and designing trade fairs.
It was here that she met Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, vice president of the Deutscher Werkbund. This sparked a period of involvement of furniture for van der Rohe as the two collaborated on many projects together. In 1927 the two worked on “Die Wohnung” in Stuttgart for the Werkbund. She designed many interiors for this exhibition including “Wohnraum in Spiegelglas.” During her career she designed store windows, exhibition displays, and fashion. In 1929 she became the artistic director who was to be responsible for the German contribution to the Barcelona World Exposition, where van der Rohe designed his world-famous pavilion. This is where the famous Barcelona chair made its first appearance. This pavilion was considered the highlight of their design efforts. In 1932 Lilly was asked by van der Rohe to teach at the Bauhaus and direct the interior design workshop. The Bauhaus was closed shortly after in 1933 by the Nazis who saw their work as “degenerate art, probably influenced by Jews.” She taught at the Hochschule für bildende Künst after the Second World War but not for long because she became ill and had to resign. She died a few years later in 1947 in Berlin.

Formative professional experience

Reich was born in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

. She started her career as a designer of textiles and women's clothes.
This experience was to be formative for her - giving her a particular interest in contrasting textures and materials, and specific skills with regard to the use of textiles in furniture.

She worked in the studio of Josef Hoffmann
Josef Hoffmann
Josef Hoffmann was an Austrian architect and designer of consumer goods.- Biography :...

 in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

 from 1908. Hoffmann was a celebrated modernist designer, responsible for designs such as the Kubus chair (1918), Cabinet (circa 1915), Koller (1911) and Broncia (1912) chairs.

In 1912 she joined the Deutscher Werkbund
Deutscher Werkbund
The Deutscher Werkbund was a German association of artists, architects, designers, and industrialists. The Werkbund was to become an important event in the development of modern architecture and industrial design, particularly in the later creation of the Bauhaus school of design...

, a government sponsored organization dedicated to the promotion of German-made products and designs. This was to be a lasting passion and recurring theme in her career.

Making a name for herself

She opened her own studio in 1914 at the age of 29, quickly developing a good professional reputation. So good, in fact, that six years later in 1920 she was made the first woman director of the Deutsche Werkbund. It was her responsibility to plan and curate design exhibits hosted by the Werkbund and intended to promote German designers. One of the exhibitions that she was responsible for took thousands of German designs to a show at the Museum of Arm in Newark, New Jersey. The show itself was poorly received, because in the years between the First and Second World Wars anything or anyone German was poorly received in the US. This was particularly true immediately before the Second World War. In spite of the inhospitable climate, the show had a profound effect on American design, and its influences can been seen in the work of US designers after this date.

Lilly and Ludwig

Through her involvement with the Werkbund Reich, Lilly also met Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was a German architect. He is commonly referred to and addressed as Mies, his surname....

. In 1926 she moved from Frankfurt to Berlin to work with Mies. She was Van Der Rohe's personal and professional partner for 13 years from 1925 until his emigration to the US in 1938. It is said that they were constant companions, working together on curating and implementing exhibitions for the Werkbund, as well as designing modern furniture
Modern furniture
Modern furniture refers to furniture produced from the late 19th century through the present that is influenced by modernism. It was a tremendous departure from all furniture design that had gone before it. Dark or gilded carved wood and richly patterned fabrics gave way to the glittering...

 as part of larger architectural commissions such as the Barcelona Pavilion
Barcelona Pavilion
The Barcelona Pavilion , designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, was the German Pavilion for the 1929 International Exposition in Barcelona, Spain. This building was used for the official opening of the German section of the exhibition. It was an important building in the history of modern...

 in 1929 and the Tugendhat House in Brno
Brno
Brno by population and area is the second largest city in the Czech Republic, the largest Moravian city, and the historical capital city of the Margraviate of Moravia. Brno is the administrative centre of the South Moravian Region where it forms a separate district Brno-City District...

.

Two of their best known modern furniture designs from this period are the Barcelona chair
Barcelona chair
The Barcelona chair was exclusively designed for the German Pavilion, that country's entry for the International Exposition of 1929, which was hosted by Barcelona, Spain...

 and Brno Chair
Brno chair
The Brno chair is a modernist cantilever chair designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in 1929-1930 for the bedroom of the Tugendhat House in Brno, Czech Republic...

.

Albert Pheiffer, Vice President of Design and Management at Knoll, has been researching and lecturing on Reich for some time. He points out that:

"It became more than a coincidence that Mies's involvement and success in exhibition design began at the same time as his personal relationship with Reich."

"It is interesting to note that Mies did not fully develop any contemporary furniture successfully before or after his collaboration with Reich".

When Mies Van der Rohe became the director of the Bauhaus School of design and architecture in 1930, Lilly Reich joined him there as one of the only female teachers. Reich taught interior design
Interior design
Interior design describes a group of various yet related projects that involve turning an interior space into an effective setting for the range of human activities are to take place there. An interior designer is someone who conducts such projects...

 and furniture design until the late 1930s.

The German born interior and product designer Lilly Reich was given some credit for her modernist designs 64 years after her death. The MoMa in NYC presented a series of discussion groups in 2010 on females artists of the Bauhaus period.
Otherwise, she would still be barely mentioned as a footnote. Lilly Reich began her career in textile design which was the acceptable professional path for females designers during the early part of the twentieth century. She played an integral part
during the Bauhaus movement in Dessau and Berlin in Germany and served on professional boards such as the Deutscher Werkbund (German Work Federation). Lilly Reich managed her own interior design firm and was a faculty member at the Berlin
University of Arts.

Lilly Reich collaborated and co-designed the Brno Chair, the famous Barcelona Chair, and the Barcelona Pavilion along with Mies van der Rohe on behalf of the German government for the 1929 World Exhibition in Barcelona, Spain.
The Barcelona Pavilion is considered to be a masterpiece of modern design, however, Lilly Reich is rarely mentioned in textbooks nor given proper credit for her contributions. She also worked with Joseph Hoffman which designed the Kubus armchair and sofa.
Lilly Reich traveled to the United States, England, and Austria to study and work with the designers of her time. She also curated exhibitions on behalf of her government.

The War Years

In 1938, just before the Second World War, Mies emigrated to the U.S.. Reich continued to manage his affairs in Germany, until her death. She visited him in the US in September 1939, but did not stay, returning instead to Berlin.

Her studio was bombed in 1943, and she was sent to a forced labour organization where she remained until 1945. After her release at the end of the war, she was instrumental in the revival of the Deutsche Werkbund, but died in Berlin before its formal re-establishment in 1950.

External links

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