LILLY REICH: DESIGNER AND ARCHITECT
Matilda McQuaid
Matilda McQuaid: LILLY REICH: DESIGNER AND ARCHITECT. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1996. First edition. Oblong slim quarto. Photo illustrated wrappers. 64 pp. 75 black and white photos, illustration, diagrams and floorplans. Hint of wear overall. Interior unmarked and very clean. Out-of-print. A nearly fine copy.
9 x 10.5 book with 64 pages and 75 black and white photos, illustration, diagrams and floorplans. Catalog from the first exhibition of work by the German architect and designer Lilly Reich (1885–1947), one of the most influential women practicing in her field during the 1920s and 1930s at The Museum of Modern Art from February 8, to May 7, 1996.
The material in the exhibition was drawn from the Museum's own collection of Reich's work, which includes more than 800 sketches, working drawings, and furniture designs and nearly 100 photographs of completed works and installations. The only major archive of Reich's work, the collection is part of the Ludwig Mies van der Rohe bequest to the Museum in 1968.
Reich derived and exercised much of her creative philosophy through her association with the progressive German Werkbund, an organization dedicated to promoting and upholding the highest standards of design and manufacture in Germany. She was the first woman elected to the board in 1920, an unprecedented appointment for a woman of that era. Reich assimilated the Werkbund's principles, approaching design with the ideological intent of improving society. She sought the overall integration of good design into everyday life through the refinement of consumer display techniques, fashion, furniture, and interiors.
Born in 1885, Reich was awarded one of her first commissions in 1911 for the Wertheim Department Store. This project was succeeded in 1913 by a window display for the pharmacy Elefanten-Apotheke, in which she showed the initial signs of an essentialist sensibility by displaying medicine jars flanked by the utensils used for making the medicine—an advertising technique exposing the source of the products she was marketing. Ms. McQuaid fixes Reich's professional turning point at the 1926 exhibition Von der Faser zum Gewebe (From Fiber to Textile) at the fifteenth annual International Frankfurt Fair: "Here, for the first time, Reich altered the prevailing custom of presenting raw materials and techniques as a mere adjunct to the finished product by choosing material and process as the essence of her installation. This became the archetype for all of her future exhibitions."
Reich's official association with Mies van der Rohe began in 1927 at the Werkbund exhibition in Stuttgart, the centerpiece of which was the Weissenhofsiedlung (Weissenhof Housing Settlement), which showcased modern architecture by an international array of architects and the work of the most progressive Werkbund representatives. She was responsible for the design of all the exhibition areas located in the central part of Stuttgart and collaborated with Mies on the Plate-Glass Hall. Reich's selection as artistic director and architect at Die Wohnung unserer Zeit, deutsche Bauausstellung Berlin (The Dwelling in Our Time, German Building Exposition, Berlin) in 1931, considered the designer's crowning achievement, accorded her creative authority over five installations. Here she demonstrated her talent in using the latest building materials to present some of the newest achievements in the architecture and building trades. In 1932, Reich was named director of the weaving studio and the interiors workshop of the Bauhaus in Dessau.