Illustration: Bruno Paul. Rug design, 1910.
The German designer Bruno Paul is often thought of as one of the architects of the Modern movement that dominated the twentieth century. His ideas concerning minimal decoration and the functional qualities of design were early factors that spelt out the subsequent Modernist career of Paul in both interiors and architecture.
Paul was a founder member of both the Vereinigte Werkstatten fur Kunst im Handwerk and the Deutscher Werkbund, two organizations that, although still routed in ideas spanning both the Arts & Crafts and Art Nouveau movements of the very early years of the twentieth century, were also fundamental in pushing forward radical ideas concerning decoration and ornament and its use, purpose and function in modern design.
The two rug designs illustrating this article were designed by Paul in around 1910. While both are decorated in overall pattern and seem relatively conventional by today's standards, it has to be remembered that decoration and pattern in this particular era could often be both flamboyant and excessive. This is not to say that the design work that Paul was producing in 1910 was particularly ahead of its time or even unique in its outlook. There were a number of other designers and organizations that were beginning to come to terms with what was being seen at the time as some of the more acute excesses of Art Nouveau. There were movements towards reining back at least some elements of pattern work, and experiments in surface pattern were used particularly well within rug and carpet manufacturing.
Illustration: Bruno Paul. Rug design, 1910.
Designers and innovative producers of often hand produced rug and carpet design work such as Bruno Paul, A E Koff and Franz Messner in Germany and Austria, Roger Fry and the Omega Workshops in Britain, and Gustav Stickley and the Craftsman Workshops in America, were all interested to varying degrees in the rationalisation of pattern work within carpet and rug design.
While in general terms the Omega Workshops in Britain took a much more creatively open-ended artistic viewpoint towards pattern and decoration, using fine artists rather than designers, and the Craftsman Workshops took a more egalitarian stance towards design, the German approach was much more inclined towards rationalisation coupled with standardisation. These two elements both of which were to dominate Modernism and through that movement much of the social and political life of the twentieth century, were worked out by such designers as Bruno Paul, often within relatively insubstantial interior accessories such as carpet and rug design.
Although both of these rugs were hand produced, they do carry the tell tale elements of early German ideas concerning the acute control of pattern work. The motifs tend towards the small and infinitely repeatable, just as would be expected from a repetitive and unthinking machine. All excessive, flamboyant and unrestrained creative flair has been toned down and controlled. These rugs are experiments in the control and containment of individual creativity. It could be said that, to some extent at least, these designs are trying to put into practise theories concerning how to inevitably control the human element within both the design and manufacturing process, and ultimately beyond that still.
These rug designs may well be seen as innocuous pattern work produced by a German furniture designer and future architect. However, they should also be seen as stepping stones towards the all-pervasive ideals of the Modernist movement that was to dominate many aspects of people's lives throughout the rest of the century and is clearly still doing the same in our own. Whether through the mass standardisation of employment, recreation, and domestic living, we are clearly still working and living within the Modernist machine. A machine that places ultimate faith within the twin framework of rationalisation and standardisation. This framework can and is applied to architecture, design, decoration or the individual.
Further reading links:
Modernism: Designing a New World
Arts and Crafts Exhibit, Munich Animals Giclee Poster Print by Bruno Paul, 44x60
The Modernist Textile: Europe And America
Art Deco and Modernist Carpets
Anni & Josef Albers
Bruno Paul: The Life and Work of a Pragmatic Modernist
Before the Bauhaus: Architecture, Politics, and the German State, 1890-1920 (Modern Architecture and Cultural Identity)
Bauhaus: 1919-1933 (Midsize)
BEFORE THE BAUHAUS
Twentieth-Century Design (Oxford History of Art)
The Werkbund: Design Theory and Mass Culture before the First World War
Deutscher Werkbund to Bauhaus: An Important Collection of German Design
The German Werkbund: The Politics of Reform in the Applied Arts
