Muster & Moderne: William Morris meets Weissenhof

In the organizer's words:

Pattern & Modernity - William Morris meets Weissenhof

A (typo)graphic art-historical intervention in the

Weissenhof workshop in the House of Mies van der Rohe

Opening: Monday, December 2, 2024, 7 pm

A project by Stefanie Schwarz and Patrick Thomas, both designers and lecturers at ABK Stuttgart, in collaboration with Tobias Bednarz, art historian, and Anja Krämer, museum director of the Weissenhof Museum in Haus Le Corbusier Stuttgart.

The British Arts and Crafts movement around the designer William Morris is often regarded as a pioneer in the development of modern design. While Morris' interior designs were strongly characterized by craftsmanship and nature motifs, an increasingly reduced and functionalist aesthetic developed in modernism. But was modernism really as free of patterns as is often assumed?

In the Weissenhofwerkstatt, Patrick Thomas confronts the simple architecture of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe with a reinterpretation of William Morris' iconic "Willow" pattern (1874). Stefanie Schwarz adds a typographic component to this intervention by staging quotations from important representatives of modernism on the subject of pattern and ornament in the exhibition space. An accompanying showcase exhibition highlights modern interior design and illustrates that decorative surface design and sometimes opulent patterns also played a role in modernism time and again.