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Bauhaus Boxes

BAUHAUS STYLE

The Bauhaus was a progressive German art and design school founded by the architect Walter Gropius that operated from 1919 to 1933. Authentic Bauhaus furnituresofas, dining chairs, tables and more — and the school’s followers married industrial and natural materials in simple, geometric forms. The goal of the Bauhaus was to erase the distinction between art and craft while embracing the use of new technologies and materials.

ORIGINS OF BAUHAUS FURNITURE DESIGN

CHARACTERISTICS OF BAUHAUS FURNITURE DESIGN

  • Emphasis on craft
  • Simplicity, order, clarity and a prioritization of functionalism
  • Incorporation of geometric shapes
  • Minimalist and refined, little to no ornamentation
  • Use of industrial materials such as tubular chrome, steel and plastic as well as leather, cane and molded plywood in furniture and other products

BAUHAUS FURNITURE DESIGNERS YOU SHOULD KNOW

AUTHENTIC BAUHAUS FURNITURE ON 1STDIBS

The name Bauhaus is derived from the German verb bauen, “to build.” Under the school’s innovative curriculum, students were taught the fine arts, such as painting and sculpture, as well as practical skills like carpentry and metalworking. 

The school moved from Weimar in 1925 to the city of Dessau, where it enjoyed its heyday under Gropius, then Hannes Meyer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. The period from 1932 to 1933 when it operated in Berlin under Mies was its final chapter. Despite its brief existence, the Bauhaus has had an enduring impact on art and design in the United States and elsewhere, and is regarded by many as the 20th century’s chief crucible of modernism

The faculty roster at the Bauhaus reads like a who’s who of modernist creative genius — it included such artists as Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky and László Moholy-Nagy along with architects and designers like Mies and Marcel Breuer, who became known for his muscular brutalist-style concrete buildings in the postwar years. In 1925, while he was head of the Bauhaus carpentry workshop, Breuer gave form to his signature innovation: the use of lightweight tubular-steel frames for chairs, side tables and sofas — a technique soon adopted by Mies and others. Breuer’s Cesca chair was the first-ever tubular steel frame chair with a caned seat to be mass produced, while the inspiration for his legendary Wassily chair, a timeless design and part of the collection crafted to furnish the Dessau school, was the bike he rode around campus.

Bauhaus design style reflects the tenets by which these creators worked: simplicity, clarity and function. They disdained superfluous ornament in favor of precise construction. Seating pieces such as side chairs, armchairs or club chairs for example, were made with tubular metal or molded plywood frames, and upholstery was made from leather or cane. Above all, designs in the Bauhaus style offer aesthetic flexibility. They can be the elements of a wholly spare, minimalist space, the quiet foundation of an environment in which color and pattern come from one’s own collection of art and artifacts.

Today, from textiles to typefaces, architecture, furniture and decorative objects for the home, Bauhaus creations continue to have an outsize influence on modern design.

Find a collection of authentic Bauhaus furniture on 1stDibs.

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Style: Bauhaus
Antique Duparquet DH&M Copper Sugar Candy Jam Sauce Pot Pan w Spout 12"
Antique Duparquet DH&M Copper Sugar Candy Jam Sauce Pot Pan w Spout 12"

Antique Duparquet DH&M Copper Sugar Candy Jam Sauce Pot Pan w Spout 12"

Located in Dayton, OH

Mid 19th to early 20th century copper patisserie / sugar / candy making / jam pot by Duparquet, Huot & Moneuse Co. Round copper pan with slightly tapered base, triangular pour spout ...

Category

Early 1900s Antique Bauhaus Boxes

Materials

Copper

Bauhaus Era Cigarette Container in White Metal, 1930s
Bauhaus Era Cigarette Container in White Metal, 1930s

Bauhaus Era Cigarette Container in White Metal, 1930s

Located in Esbjerg, DK

A 1930s container for cigarettes or personal smalls. Distinct simple Bauhaus - functionalist styling. It is made from an un-hallmarked solid white metal. A perfect piece for honest i...

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1930s European Vintage Bauhaus Boxes

Materials

Metal

Colorful Semi Precious Stone Rectangular Jewelry or Trinket Box with Lid
Colorful Semi Precious Stone Rectangular Jewelry or Trinket Box with Lid

Colorful Semi Precious Stone Rectangular Jewelry or Trinket Box with Lid

Located in Oklahoma City, OK

A beautiful colorful decorative box with a lid created from Carrara marble and inlaid with a variety of semi-precious stones. The sides are inlaid with a variety of stones in abstrac...

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20th Century Indian Bauhaus Boxes

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Carl Auböck Chrome Box with Leather Lid, 1930s
Carl Auböck Chrome Box with Leather Lid, 1930s

Carl Auböck Chrome Box with Leather Lid, 1930s

By Werkstätte Carl Auböck

Located in Vienna, AT

A refined early piece from the Carl Auböck workshop, dating to the 1930s. This chrome-plated box features clean, modernist lines contrasted by a hand-stitched leather lid — a hallmar...

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Mid-20th Century Austrian Bauhaus Boxes

Materials

Chrome

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Previously Available Items
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German geometric enameled pill box attributed to Herbert Bayer. An exceptional representative piece of the Bauhaus art movement. This box has been made in Germany during the art deco period, back in the 1923. Crafted in an squared shape with chamfer corners in solid .935/.999 sterling silver. The reverse is treated with engine turned guilloche design, topped with white translucent hot enamel. The top lid is embellished with a gorgeous art deco geometric composition, with applications of red, black, gray and white enamel. It is fitted with three barrels hinge and a thumb snap push. The interiors are treated with more engine turned guilloche and blue enamel. The Bauhaus School Of Design Bauhaus Art The Bauhaus, titled after a German phrase that means “house of construction,” was created in 1919 by architect Walter Gropius in Weimar, Germany. He took over a pre-existing school of Arts and Crafts in 1915, and the revolutionary new Bauhaus art school was founded four years later via the merging of this establishment with the Weimar Academy of Fine Art. The Bauhaus style was inspired by 19th and early 20th-century creative tendencies including the Art Nouveau style and the various foreign versions like the Vienna Secession and Jugendstil, as well as the Arts and Crafts movement. All of these groups desired to blur the line between the applied and fine arts, as well as to reconnect imagination and fabrication; their heritage was represented in the romantic medievalism of the Bauhaus movement ideology during its formative days when it styled itself as some kind of craftsmen’s union. By the mid-1920s, however, this ideal had given place to a focus on integrating industrial Bauhaus graphic design and art, and it was this focus that anchored the Bauhaus’ most innovative and significant achievements. Simultaneously, the 1910s rise of Russian Constructivism provided a more urgent and aesthetically appropriate predecessor for the Bauhaus’ fusion of artistic and mechanical design. When the Bauhaus officially opened in 1920, it took up home in the old sculpture workshop of the Grand-Ducal Saxon institute, constructed in the Art Nouveau fashion. The school’s strategy was centered on its innovative and impactful curriculum. Gropius described it as a wheel with rings, with the outer circle chosen to represent the six-month preparatory course launched by Johannes Itten that focused on the foundational facets of design, particularly the differing characteristics of varied shapes, colors, and substances. (Arts In Context with thanks) Weight: 40.60 Grams, (26.03 Dwt). Measurements: 52 mm by 52 mm by 15 mm (2.05 x 2.05 x 0.59 Inches). Hallmarks: Stamped with the maker's mark, the mark for the assay of the silver and signed, "STERLING GERMANY". Herbert Bayer Vintage Bauhaus 'The 1923 Bauhaus Exhibition', Germany, Herbert Bayer, Reproduction 200gsm A3 Vintage Bauhaus Poster Herbert Bayer Bauhaus Exhibition Poster, 1923 Bayer apprenticed under the artist Georg Schmidt Hammer in Linz. Leaving the workshop to study at the Darmstadt Artists' Colony, he became interested in Walter Gropius's Bauhaus manifesto. After Bayer had studied for four years at the Bauhaus under such teachers as Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee[2] and László Moholy-Nagy, Gropius appointed Bayer director of printing and advertising. In the spirit of reductive minimalism, Bayer developed a crisp visual style and adopted use of all-lowercase, sans serif typefaces for most Bauhaus publications. Bayer is one of several typographers of the period including Kurt Schwitters and Jan Tschichold...

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1920s German Vintage Bauhaus Boxes

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Bauhaus Industrial Crate, 1930s, 22 Items Available
Bauhaus Industrial Crate, 1930s, 22 Items Available

Bauhaus Industrial Crate, 1930s, 22 Items Available

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H 14.97 in W 30.71 in D 15.75 in

Bauhaus Industrial Crate, 1930s, 22 Items Available

Located in Praha, CZ

Storage and transport boxes made in the 1930s and used for almost a century in a textile factory. The lightweight and practical construction consists of steel wire and hard, strong paper boxes. They were designed for carrying lightweight textile products and for stacking, as the bottom section is slightly wider than the top section. They have acquired a beautiful aged patina over the years. They would make a great decoration as well as being practical. 22 items available.

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1930s Czech Vintage Bauhaus Boxes

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Round Blue Lapis Lazuli and Marble Stone Jewelry or Trinket Box with Lid
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Located in Oklahoma City, OK

Beautiful blue Lapis Lazuli and Carrara marble stone jewelry box. Created from genuine blue Lapis Lazuli, this box is low in profile and round in form. This lovely jewelry or trinket box features a lid that sits snuggly onto its base. Both of which are completely covered in this beautiful blue stone. The interior of the box's base and lid, are created using Carrara marble. The lid features stays, which retrofit into the base, and allow the top to hold to the base without sliding or moving. The exterior is flanked with the gorgeous richly-hued blue lapis lazuli stone. How we would style it: This blue stone box...

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20th Century Indian Bauhaus Boxes

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Lapis Lazuli, Carrara Marble

Colorful Semi Precious Stone Rectangular Jewelry or Trinket Box with Lid
Colorful Semi Precious Stone Rectangular Jewelry or Trinket Box with Lid

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Located in Oklahoma City, OK

A beautiful colorful decorative box with a lid created from Carrara marble and inlaid with a variety of semi-precious stones. The sides are inlaid with a variety of stones in abstrac...

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Brass and Copper Moneybox Attributed to Marianne Brandt
Brass and Copper Moneybox Attributed to Marianne Brandt

Brass and Copper Moneybox Attributed to Marianne Brandt

By Marianne Brandt

Located in London, GB

An early twentieth century brass and copper moneybox of spherical form, the brass body opening with lock and key, supported on three copper ball feet, with copper money slot to the t...

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Early 20th Century German Bauhaus Boxes

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Bauhaus boxes for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a broad range of unique Bauhaus boxes for sale on 1stDibs. Many of these items were first offered in the Mid-20th Century, but contemporary artisans have continued to produce works inspired by this style. If you’re looking to add vintage boxes created in this style to your space, the works available on 1stDibs include decorative objects and other home furnishings, frequently crafted with metal, stone and other materials. If you’re shopping for used Bauhaus boxes made in a specific country, there are Europe, Germany, and Asia pieces for sale on 1stDibs. While there are many designers and brands associated with original boxes, popular names associated with this style include and Marianne Brandt. It’s true that these talented designers have at times inspired knockoffs, but our experienced specialists have partnered with only top vetted sellers to offer authentic pieces that come with a buyer protection guarantee. Prices for boxes differ depending upon multiple factors, including designer, materials, construction methods, condition and provenance. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $550 and tops out at $1,981 while the average work can sell for $977.