- Museum number
- 1981,1203.1
- Description
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Coffee percolator; mould-blown fire-proof glass with rubber fitting to secure the funnel in position beneath the upper vessel; ebonised wood handle; the neck of the lower vessel is encircled by a metal band which slots into the split wood handle clamped by a metal ring; the sieve and funnel are also of glass.
- Production date
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1925-1930 (designed)
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1930-1939 (made between)
- Dimensions
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Height: 10.70 centimetres (lower vessel)
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Height: 27.40 centimetres
- $Inscriptions
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- Curator's comments
- Text from J. Rudoe, 'Decorative Arts 1850-1950. A catalogue of the British Museum collection'. 2nd ed. no.154.
Marcks trained as a sculptor in Berlin before joining the Bauhaus in 1919. He was artistic director of the Bauhaus Pottery Workshop from 1919 to 1925. From 1925 to 1933 he taught ceramics at the Kunstgewerbeschule, Burg Giebichenstein, near Halle, becoming director of the school in 1928. In 1933 he was dismissed and barred from activity until after the war.
This is one of the first coffee percolators in fireproof glass and was illustrated by Herbert Read in 1934 (Art and Industry, 34) as a good example of modern design for mass production. Fire-proof glass was developed by Schott initially for laboratory ware and applied to domestic glassware after the First World War. Schott's first fireproof-glass coffee-machine of 1925 was thought to look too much like a scientific instrument and so Erich Schott approached Gerhard Marcks at Burg Giebichenstein to create a new form. For E. Schott's account of his collaboration with Marcks, see Baukunst und Werkform 8, August 1954 (reference kindly supplied by Anne Marie Ittstein, Schott Glaswerke). The use of a glass sieve and funnel ensures that the coffee makes contact with glass only, preserving its full aroma.
For the earliest illustrated version of Marcks' Kaffeemaschine Sintrax, see Die Form, Bonn and Berlin, August 1928, 242, where it is shown with its own stand and spirit lamp; the lower vessel is larger than this example and has a spout, while the knop is above the top of the lid instead of being sunken. The handle curves downwards. However, by 1930 Sintrax was being produced with a sunken knop, as illustrated in Die Schaulade, 6 Jahrgang, Heft 9, July 1930, 593. Marcks' Sintrax was also produced in a 11/2-litre size; for an example in the Bauhaus-Archiv Museum, Berlin, see H.M. Wingler, 'Bauhaus-Archiv Museum für Gestaltung: Sammlungs-Katalog', Berlin 1981, no. 235. Some recent publications credit the straight handle to Wagenfeld (Bonn 1988, Kunsthistorisches Institut der Universitat Bonn, 'Wilhelm Wagenfeld. Kunst im Gebrauch', 10), but no source is given and the Schott archives contain no record of Wagenfeld's involvement with Sintrax.
The Sintrax coffee-machine underwent later modifications: for Bruno Mauder's version of 1949, see S. Hirzel, 'Kunsthandwerk und Manufaktur in Deutschland seit 1945', Berlin 1953, 30; Deutsche Warenkunde, Stuttgart 1955, Blatt 2, 2/6, and Schott Information 3/1984, 100 Years of Schott, 51. The Mauder version has a sunken knop and the lid is inset rather than following the profile of the upper vessel; the lower vessel is a flattened sphere rather than a cone and the handle curves downwards. Production of the Sintrax coffee-machine was discontinued in the late 1960s (information supplied by A. M. Ittstein).– The central rubber fitting was originally in red rubber; after the war it was changed to black rubber. This model was produced until 1939 and again after the war from 1951-1954 in Jena, so this example may date from the early post-war years.
Exhibition history:
2019-2020, 8 Nov - 1 Mar, Denmark, Copenhagen, National Museum of Denmark, Germany: Memories of a Nation
Information supplementary to Rudoe 1991:
See K. Koivisto (ed) , 'European Glass in use', exhibition catalogue, Finnish Glass Museum, Riihimäki 1994, pp. 140-41, no. 51, described as turn mould-blown.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
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Exhibited:
2019-2020, 8 Nov-1 Mar, Denmark, Copenhagen, National Museum of Denmark, Germany: Memories of a Nation
BM, 20th-century gallery, 1994-2006
- Condition
- The straight handle with spring clip is a later modification.
- Acquisition date
- 1981
- Department
- Britain, Europe and Prehistory
- Registration number
- 1981,1203.1
