Bauhaus-inspired buys that celebrate the school's centenary

Bauhaus bandwagon syndrom is rife this year. Though many new designs veer into gimmick, a select few capture the Gropius methodology, and merge craft and fine arts in both aesthetics and ideals. Here's an edit of the ones that work.

Gunta Stölzl's blanket, by Wallace Sewell

Textile design studio Wallace Sewell has been commissioned to recreate an original design for a lost blanket by Bauhaus weaver Gunta Stölzl. The Prellerhaus blanket was first made in 1926 for dormitories (pictured top) at the weaving workshops in Dessau, before the design was waylaid in the US after an exhibition there. Now, with help from Gunta Stölzl’s daughter, Wallace Sewell has realised the design, knitting the vision together from achive images.

The Wallace Sewell Prellerhaus blanket harks back to the original as closely as possible, picking up on the rhythm and simplicity of Stölzl’s design, but certain aspects have been updated. The original rayon material, for example, has been replaced with woollen fibres – more sustainable and desirable today.

Leica CL ‘100 Years of Bauhaus' special edition, by Leica

This week, Leica unveiled a new special edition of its popular CL camera. It maintains the same basic features as the traditional model (such as 24-megapixel sensor, fast autofocus and 4K video recording) while highlighting the Bauhaus anniversary through the school's historic logo, which is embossed into the camera’s leather covering. 
Only 150 units of the new Leica CL ‘100 Years of Bauhaus’ will be produced, so make it snappy.

Bauhaus-inspired prints, by Sascha Lobe for The Conran Shop

For London Craft Week 2019, Sascha Lobe – Pentagram partner and Wallpaper* Design Award 2019 winner – designed five limited-edition Bauhaus-inspired prints for The Conran Shop. In conjunction, a series of screenprinting sessions (pictured above) were coordinated by London-based digital print specialists Make-Ready. The prints combine 30 familiar Bauhaus glyphs with five epochal furniture pieces by the school’s key legacy holders: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Marcel Breuer, Mart Stam, Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier. The resulting works feature 300 unique designs, which were all created live in store.

Bauhausmädels: A Tribute to Pioneering Women Artists, by Taschen

The female artists at the heart of Bauhaus – who often went under appreciated – overcame the societal expectations of their time to become pioneers in their own right. In Bauhausmädels. A Tribute to Pioneering Women Artists, trailblazers like Marianne Brandt, Gertrud Arndt, and Lucia Moholy are seen in a never-before-seen light. This visual exploration of Bauhaus' most underrated members seeks to give these pioneering ‘Bauhaus girls' overdue respect, through exclusive photographic portraits, incisive text from ‘communication scientist' Patrick Rössler, and biographical data.

Be inspired by their stories: these women faced unreasonable family expectations, the ambiguous attitude of the faculty and administration, outdated social conventions, and, ultimately, the political repression of the Nazi regime – and still managed to courageously elude traditional gender roles in aid of a different, creative future. Read our review of the book here.