Object Timeline
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Vase Vase
This is a vase. It was designed by Peter Behrens and manufactured by Walter Scherf & Co. and distributed by Liberty & Company. It is dated 1903–1909. Its medium is pewter. It is a part of the Product Design and Decorative Arts department.
This pair of Osiris vases illustrates a transitional period in Peter Behrens’s oeuvre. The architect-designer was a key proponent of modernism, creating works such as the AEG Turbine Factory, which established a standard for the industrial aesthetic that would be embraced by the next generation of modernists. Behrens worked closely with his successors, mentoring, among others, Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, and Walter Gropius, all of whom would contribute canonical works and theories to modern design. Before embracing the austere functionalism that characterizes his later works, however, Behrens was an important early disseminator of the German art nouveau, or Jugendstil (“youth style”). Taking its inspiration from the English Arts & Crafts movement, the Jugendstil found expression in inventive forms, organic lines, and vegetal motifs. The Osiris vases are exemplars of Behren’s Jugendstil experiments; the mouth of the vases incorporates a gently undulating lip set atop a curved, pyramidal base. The highly polished pewter volume is punctuated by a rectangular grid of stamped squares towards its bottom, and by a similar grid of pierced squares near the lip. Although the volume seems alive with an organic character, the purity of form and gridded decoration indicate a shift towards the sober aesthetic Behrens would embrace after abandoning the Jugendstil and curving line entirely in 1904. The Osiris line and these vases in particular mark a transition from Behren’s earlier, more organic works to the aesthetic and character he would develop and perpetuate through the Deutscher Werkbund.
This object was
donated by
George R. Kravis II.
It is credited Gift of George R. Kravis II.
- Sidewall, Claudia
- machine-printed paper.
- Museum purchase through bequest of Ida McNeil in memory of Lincoln C. McNeil....
- 1985-71-1
- Print, Bodenbelag: Phantasus (Phantasus Floor Covering), plate 28, in Die...
- color lithograph on paper.
- Gift of Jerrol E. Golden.
- 1999-41-1-29
- Woman's Head (Two Faces) Salt Dish
- gilt and enameled porcelain.
- The Henry and Ludmilla Shapiro Collection; Partial gift and partial purchase....
- 1989-41-59
Our curators have highlighted 6 objects that are related to this one. Here are three of them, selected at random:
- Metal Wave Vase
- steel (stainless), styrene butadiene rubber (sbr).
- Gift of Gallery 91.
- 1991-159-12
- Poster, Spitzen der Wiener Werkstätte (Wiener Werkstätte Lacework)
- lithograph on off-white paper.
- Museum purchase through gift of George A. Hearn.
- 2002-19-1
- Dining Chair, from the Purkersdorf Sanatorium Dining Chair
- beechwood, leather, metal.
- Museum purchase from Combined Funds and through gift of Crane and Co..
- 1968-6-1
Its dimensions are
H x W x D: 14 × 6 × 5.5 cm (5 1/2 × 2 3/8 × 2 3/16 in.)
It has the following markings
On underside of vase: [1] “ “OSIRIS” ”, impressed (manufacturer’s mark) [2] “NH” intertwined within a circle, impressed (designer’s mark; Nuremburg Handwerkkunst, Bayerisches Gewerbemuseum) [3] “1018”, impressed (model number)
Cite this object as
Vase Vase; Designed by Peter Behrens (German, 1868–1940); Manufactured by Walter Scherf & Co.; Distributed by Liberty & Company (United Kingdom); pewter; H x W x D: 14 × 6 × 5.5 cm (5 1/2 × 2 3/8 × 2 3/16 in.); Gift of George R. Kravis II; 2018-22-137
This object was previously on display as a part of the exhibition Energizing the Everyday: Gifts From the George R. Kravis II Collection.
