Station: [7] The Route to Art Nouveau

“Milch und Brot macht Wangen rot.” – Milk and bread, cheeks of red.

This sedate little adage adorns the top edge of the blue glazed jug with a spout, which was made at the Schack workshop in Bürgel in around 1889. But if you look more closely, you’ll notice that this milk jug is anything but sedate!

The hyperactive floral motifs seem to disgorge an entire flower meadow on to the breakfast table. There are dandelion leaves and seemingly natural ornaments that are not at all like the overly fussy decorative elements of the late 19th century.

The milk jug is a piece by Hermann Obrist, who went on to become one of the founders of the German Jugendstil – the Art Nouveau style. We know from entries in the Ceramic Museum’s visitors’ book that he spent time in Bürgel on six occasions between 1889 and 1898. He was just 27 when he first came here at the request of the Grand Duke and established contacts with local potters who then worked from his designs. These early pieces foreshadow Obrist’s subsequent artistic treatment of nature and its forms.

Hermann Obrist went on to radically reform the decorative arts and take them to new heights. For the potters of Bürgel, this fresh style was the prelude to a new era. After centuries of producing rustic peasant pottery and specialising in decorative ceramics in a pretentious Wilhelmine style, Art Nouveau had now arrived.

So the state government in Weimar supported the local potters – and not just by setting up manufactories and institutions – such as the school of modelling and drawing and the museum – or by organising trade displays. It also sent prominent artists to Bürgel, whose designs revolutionised the style of ceramics and gave the potters of Bürgel a taste of what was then state of the art.