Compare two tea objects by one designer

This reading draws on museum catalogues and object records.

Marianne Brandt’s *Tea Infuser and Strainer* (about 1924) is a small silver-and-ebony object, about 8.3 cm high. The Met says it makes a concentrated tea extract that can be diluted with hot water in the cup—a different use from a conventional teapot that brews a full serving. The museum notes that the high D-shaped ebony handle makes pouring easier and calls the infuser a quintessential Bauhaus object. The Met object record

MoMA’s *Teapot* (1924) is a student work in nickel silver and ebony. It was hand-forged as a prototype exploring industrial production, but it was not mass-produced. MoMA names László Moholy-Nagy as the metal workshop’s form master who encouraged Brandt. Compare the objects through brewing method, handle, material, and production status rather than using “functionalism” as a vague label. MoMA object record

Do not reduce the school to one look

MoMA’s record of its 1938 Bauhaus retrospective describes nearly 700 works spanning textiles, glass, wood, canvas, metal, and paper. It also discusses the school’s interdisciplinary influence across photography, architecture, painting, graphic design, and theater. Brandt’s tea objects are examples of how a metal workshop tested use and production; they are not a complete summary of the Bauhaus. MoMA exhibition record

A catalogue-based comparison

Write down each object’s date, material, and dimensions, then compare how it prepares tea and how its handle serves that use. Finally, keep the teapot’s intended industrial-production pathway separate from its actual status as a prototype: intention to mass-produce is not proof that mass production occurred.

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