CBCbk2

Centering Bauhaus Clay:
A Potter’s Perspective
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Centering Bauhaus Clay: A Potter’s Perspective by Dean and Geraldine Schwarz. 64 pp., 21 black and white illustrations. First edition, softbound. $20.00. ISBN 978-0-9761381-5-0. Book design by Roy R. Behrens. Copies of this book can be ordered directly from South Bear Press, 2248 South Bear Road, Decorah, Iowa 52101 USA. List price is $20, plus $5 per copy for shipping and handling to US addresses. Iowa residents add 7% sales tax. For international shipping costs or other questions, send an email to <dschwarz50@hotmail.com>.

The publication of this book coincides with the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Bauhaus, the most famous art school in history, which began in Weimar, Germany, in 1919. In nearly every account of the school, it is said that its pottery workshop ended in 1925, when the controversial school was moved to Dessau. It is also a common impression that there were only two exemplary potters at the Bauhaus, Theodor Bogler and Otto Lindig. In this essay, it is shown that these beliefs, along with a handful of others, are only half-truths. The school's pottery workshop, having thrived in its first years at Dornburg, only officially ended with the death of its crafts master, Max Krehan. Even then, it continued unofficially at Burg Giebichenstein, an historic castle at Halle-on-Saale, where it was inspirited by its form master, sculptor Gerhard Marcks, and his and Krehan's gifted student, Bauhaus master potter Marguerite Wildenhain. It was Wildenhain (in flight from the Nazis) who transported that workshop's philosophy to the U.S., where she set up a school on a mountain top called Pond Farm, through which she shared with her students the legacy of Bauhaus pottery.