The world of fabrics

Experimental, excessive, functional, and simple in its expressions are some of the words that characterize Bauhaus, one of the 20th century’s most distinctive and leading styles. Bauhaus is a basic element within modern art, architecture, furniture design and interior design. The idea is to summarize and break down the barriers between craft and art, so that in unison products can be developed and created and in expression can be both artistic and commercial.

The thoughts and the ideas behind Bauhaus were established by the German architect Walther Gropius who in 1919 gathered a row of leading European artists as teachers at the new art school in Weimar. It was a vocational school where students were taught and trained in a wide variety of crafts and arts from cabinet-making, painting and weaving to architecture, printing techniques and acting. The school was named Bauhaus “a house for building, growth and nourishment”, and it created the starting point of a new international style, the so-called Bauhaus-design, that is characterized by simplicity, refi ned lines and forms, geometrical abstraction and the use of new materials and technologies.

A long line of products designed in the workshops of the school e.g. lamps, furniture, textiles and wallpapers were later put into production which soon gave the Bauhaus-school a reputation as innovative and trailblazing. In 1923 the school held an exhibit in Weimar with the title “Art and technology – a new unity” showing an example of the futuristic home and its interior. Here the many visitors could see for the fi rst time a home with focus on not only functionality but also on price as it was built of mass produced units of e.g. steel and concrete. 

The Bauhaus-school also blazed new trails for textile production e.g. the use of synthetics such as nylon. The primary colors, i.e. red, yellow, blue, and black and off-white were the basic Bauhaus colors. Danish Art Weaving’s Bauhaus series of furniture textiles is also based on this color scheme as well as on the original weavings that the German art school very successfully created in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Bauhaus is today a fi ne example of a leading style within contemporary furniture design and interior decoration.