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Howard Dearstyne

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The Legacy of the Bauhaus

Hin Bredendieck

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From the Bauhaus to Black Mountain

Xanti Schawinsky

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Music at the Bauhaus, 1919-1933

Clement Jewitt

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Foundations for Design Education: Continuing the Bauhaus Vorkurs Vision

Fern Lerner

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Bauhaus in America by Judith Pearlman

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Helmut Von Erffa

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JoAnn C. Ellert

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Bauhaus Conflicts, 1919-2009: Controversies and Counterparts by Philipp Oswalt

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The Bauhaus Contribution

Walter Gropius and Howard Dearstyne

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Modern Art in Your Life

Robert Goldwater and René d'Harnoncourt

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American Graphic Design Expression

Katherine McCoy

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Modern Expression in American Silver

The Designs of the Weimar Émigré Albert Feinauer (1886–1955)

W. Scott Braznell  

W. Scott Braznell is an independent historian of American decorative arts and design, with a specialty in silver of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The heretofore obscure designer, silversmith, and jeweler Albert Feinauer played a notable role in bringing German avant-garde design to American silver during his thirty years in the United States beginning in 1925. The progressive ideas and production techniques discussed were derived from the artist’s affiliation with leading Deutsche Werkbund designers as well as his Bauhaus experience and his time designing for Georg Jensen in Copenhagen and teaching at Henry van de Velde’s arts and crafts school in Weimar. A sample of his tableware and jewelry creations illustrates the innovations that Feinauer brought to his International Silver Company and Gorham designs.

At the end of the 1920s, reports of the design ideas under development in Germany received increasing interest from American stylists, designers, and manufacturers and resulted in a shift away from the chic “moderne” and skyscraper styles.1 Progressive-minded designers began disparaging these latter novelty styles as meretricious modernism, in the face of an exemplary goal to improve more egalitarian modernist designs, oriented to machine production, which had been brewing in the Deutsche Werkbund (German Work Federation) and were underway at the Bauhaus. In 1929, Alfred Auerbach, editor of the trade paper Retailing Home Furnishings, wrote, “The German type of modernism is now definitely in the ascendancy over the French in this country.”2 In 1930, a writer for the New York Times commented, “Though standardization—for the good of all—the use of purposeful materials, the adjustment between contemporary life and contemporary interiors may be the ultimate object of all modern decoration, it takes a German rather than a French temperament to realize these ideals.”3

American manufacturers of both silver and other consumer furnishings and periodicals reporting on consumer furnishings sent personnel abroad to survey the evidence of modern German design. Some even traveled on Germany’s transportation marvel, the airship. The arrival of the Graf Zeppelin from Friedrichshafen over New York City on October 15, 1928, caused all activity to come to a standstill for half an hour as traffic halted, courts adjourned, and people on roofs, streets, and in parks viewed the airship, which was 50 percent larger than an ordinary ocean liner.4 On October 31, 1928, George N. Crouse, the vice president of the Benedict Manufacturing Company in East Syracuse, New York, mailed a postcard on which he wrote “I’m taking off for Europe on the airship Graf-Zeppelin this morning to see whets [sic] new in silverware on the other side.”5 In a report on European modernist design published in Vogue in May 1929, Edith Morgan King recalled her trip the previous summer to Denmark, Sweden, Germany, and France: “the Germans are more at home in the modern style than the French, or any one else, for that matter.” Later, describing a visit to Berlin, she wrote, “we were enchanted with Emil Lettré’s silver shop in Unter den Linden, and with his beautiful hand-wrought silver, examples of which can be seen now at Eugene Schoen’s shop in New York.”6 In 1930, Walter Rendell Storey’s report in the New York Times on the work of German silversmiths and metalworkers included the vanguard practitioners Paul Haustein (1880–1944), an artist-designer professor in Stuttgart, and Christian Dell (1893–1974), master in the Bauhaus metal workshop.7

In 1928, the International Silver Company sensed a growing potential market for silver designs responding to recent German style and production ideas. The company sent two of their staff designers, Alfred G. Kintz (1884–1963) and Frederick W. Stark (1885–1969), to Germany, among other countries, to visit factories and exhibitions so that they could monitor and report on the latest trends in silver, ceramics, and glass.8 It seems likely that in fulfilling their errand they returned with the copy in the International Silver Company Archives of the profusely illustrated 1928 catalog, Europäisches Kunstgewerbe 1927, for the international decorative arts exhibition held in 1927 at Leipzig, a reference of major importance for identifying new design trends at the time.9

In addition to sending staff designers abroad, the International Silver Company engaged a German émigré designer, Albert Feinauer, to join its staff. His “Special Line” of silver-plate tableware made by the company’s Barbour Silver Company division was introduced in 1929. The Special Line is remarkable not only for its stylistic affinity to vanguard silver from Germany and elsewhere in Europe but also for its artistry. Through his work for International, Feinauer, a heretofore forgotten designer and craftsman, was responsible for advancing Germany’s progressive design ideas in this country.

When Feinauer left Germany in 1925 seeking employment in America’s silver industry, his qualifications for implementing German modern styles and production ideas into American silver manufacturing were formidable. After apprenticing at Peter Bruckmann and Söhne, Germany’s largest silver manufacturer, he taught metalwork at the arts and crafts school in Weimar, which was founded by Henry van de Velde, one of Europe’s leading modernists. After a brief stint in Copenhagen designing for the preeminent silversmith Georg Jensen, he opened his own jewelry studio in Weimar, where he had a firsthand acquaintance with the Bauhaus, which was then in the vanguard for allying design, craft, and industry, as the successor school to the two Grand-Ducal Saxon institutions, the Academy of Fine Art and the School of Arts and Crafts, established by van de Velde.

Feinauer’s Early Career

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A study of Albert Feinauer’s life reveals his rigorous training with an influential German silver firm and his firsthand involvement with avant-garde design circles in Germany before he came to the United States in 1925. Born George Albert Feinauer on June 12, 1886, in Kupferzell, a small town in the southeast German province Baden-Wurttemberg, he was the only son of four children born to Johann-Georg Feinauer (1846–95) and Christina-Wilhemine Jechel (b. 1849). Kupferzell is near Heilbronn, where Germany’s leading silver manufacturer, Peter Bruckmann and Söhne (1805–1973), was located (figs. 1–2). Albert Feinauer was only nine years old when his father died in 1895, and it was probably about 1900 when Feinauer entered an apprenticeship at Bruckmann. A 1905 photograph shows Feinauer at age nineteen wearing a white shirt and black apron and standing in the middle of a group of Bruckmann workers (fig. 3).10 The firm had supported the local commercial school that offered evening classes for an apprenticeship course in chasing before reorganizing such training in 1906 as a day school of the Bruckmann factory, with a newly extended range of subjects taught. It seems Feinauer’s apprenticeship took place in the chasing, engraving, and design departments.11 The sculptor Josef Michael Lock (1875–1964) served as director for training Bruckmann’s designers, silversmiths, chasers, and engravers. The silver scholar Annelies Krekel-Aalberse has observed that Lock was one of the Bruckmann sculptors “who understood the requirements that an object had to meet for normal factory production ‘without obtrusive, stuck-on ornament, but conceived on the basis of form.’”12

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Fig. 1.  Map of Germany and Denmark.

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Fig. 2.  Detail of figure 1 showing Heilbronn and Stuttgart at lower left, Munich at lower right, Weimar at upper center, and Berlin at upper right.

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Fig. 3.  “Arbeiter bei P. Bruckmann und Söhne,” showing Albert Feinauer in white shirt with black apron at center of a group of workmen at Peter Bruckmann and Sons, 1905. (Fotosammlung Stadtarchiv Heilbronn, Germany.)

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During Feinauer’s years as an apprentice at Bruckmann, the artist-designer Paul Haustein made designs for Bruckmann, and Feinauer’s work displays a direct connection to Haustein’s design ideas as well as those developed in the English arts and crafts movement. Feinauer designed and made the silver cup, which, according to his son, Peter, was Feinauer’s masterpiece for the completion of his apprenticeship (fig. 4). The cup’s probable date is 1907, when Feinauer turned twenty-one. It is raised by hand from a flat sheet, embellished with moonstones, and mounted on cast scroll feet. In 1906, Haustein furnished a cup design to Bruckmann also mounted with oval cabochons bordered with linear curled decoration.13 The adornment of silver with unfaceted semiprecious stones on the hammer-textured surface of unplanished silver was an innovation introduced in the 1890s by the English architect and designer Charles R. Ashbee (1863–1942) to the well-known arts and crafts movement silver he designed for his Guild of Handicraft. Ashbee’s design ideas had been widely emulated on the Continent by 1905, as seen in the moonstone cabochons that adorn the subtly hammered surface of Feinauer’s cup.

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Fig. 4.  Albert Feinauer, cup, ca. 1907. Mark (bottom): “[crescent moon and crown]/900/A.Feinauer.” Silver and moonstones; H. 5⅙″. (Peter T. Feinauer collection.)

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Feinauer’s other early work further reveals Paul Haustein’s important influence. His silver belt buckle set with a vertical oval turquoise flanked above and below with scrolled tendrils and framed left and right by ornamental rinceau is closely related to the medallions on a covered bowl designed by Haustein and made by Bruckmann for the 1910 Brussels Exposition (fig. 5).14 A silver jewel casket on ivory feet features ornamental panels recalling those on the Haustein bowl, while the coiled leaves and grapes that flank the frolicking mythological figures are akin to the pierced ornament on Feinauer’s belt buckle (fig. 6).15 The scholar Rüdiger Joppien has remarked on the “impulses in silver in Baden-Wurttemberg” coming from the Kunstgewerbe Schule in Stuttgart, where Haustein was a professor. Stuttgart is just thirty miles (forty-five kilometers) from Heilbronn, and it seems possible that Feinauer was a Haustein student.16

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Fig. 5.  Albert Feinauer, belt buckle, ca. 1905. Mark (back): “800.” Silver and turquoise; H. 2¾″, W. 27/16″. (Peter T. Feinauer collection.)

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Fig. 6.  Albert Feinauer, casket, ca. 1913. Unmarked silver-plated brass and ivory; H. 7⅜″. (Peter T. Feinauer collection.)

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After completing his apprenticeship, Feinauer continued at Bruckmann until 1910 and thereafter maintained a working association with the firm until 1915, probably as one of their large stable of freelance designers.17 The sacramental silver that he was producing for Bruckmann between 1910 and 1915 may have influenced the reliquary-like shape of his casket. Two silver censers, undoubtedly among Feinauer’s work, were exhibited by Bruckmann at the 1911 Religious Art exhibition at the Landesgewerbemuseum in Stuttgart. When the German trade journal Goldeschmiede-Zeitung reviewed the exhibit, it mentioned Feinauer as among those Bruckmann “artists with their own ateliers.”18 Feinauer had a thorough grounding in the skills of both designing and fabricating silver, including modeling, forging, chasing, and engraving, and in addition, he was designing and fabricating jewelry for Bruckmann.19

Albert Feinauer’s Collaboration with Henry van de Velde

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By 1910, at age twenty-four, Feinauer had left Heilbronn for Weimar. There, “warmly recommended as a teacher and technician by Peter Bruckmann,” he commenced an important collaboration with the Belgian architect, designer, and theoretician Henry van de Velde (1863–1957).20 Van de Velde had left Brussels for Weimar in 1902 at the invitation of Wilhelm Ernst (1876–1923), Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, to act as art adviser for industrial design and crafts and to create a suite of silver on the occasion of the duke’s marriage.

Van de Velde was a principal international influence in the modern design movement, and he became the dominant artistic influence in Weimar up to World War I. After his arrival, he founded the “crafts seminar” in Weimar. It was the precursor of his Institut für Kunstgewerbe und Kunstindustrie (Grand-Ducal Saxon School of Arts and Crafts), which he founded in 1906 and which, in turn with the Grand-Ducal School for the Fine Arts, was the predecessor of the Bauhaus established in 1919 by Walter Gropius (1883–1969). In 1908, van de Velde established the first metal shop of his institute, taught by Egon Dinkloh (w. ca. 1908–11). In 1910, Feinauer succeeded Dinkloh as the metal shop’s teacher for gold and silver work.21 He also directed the execution of unique or occasional pieces designed by van de Velde. Soon van de Velde put Feinauer in charge of his plans for an enlarged metal shop: the annual report for the Kunstgewerbeschule for 1911–12 noted that the metal workshop was the only workshop in the school slated for expansion.22

In 1915, World War I brought about van de Velde’s resignation as head of the School of Arts and Crafts, but as late as 1947, during van de Velde’s retirement in Switzerland, he and Feinauer still corresponded.23 In retirement, van de Velde recalled the school in his memoirs: “The same wing of the building, also on the ground floor, was the location of the workshops for metalwork and lamp-making, as well as the atelier for goldsmiths, with Albert Feinauer as principal teacher. At that time, he was one of the leading goldsmiths and metal enchasers. … He made a series of tea services after my designs, and they are incomparable in workmanship and amongst the best things I have ever created in my life.”24 Regrettably, the whereabouts of only one of these services is known.25 In 1914, Feinauer supplied a design to Bruckmann for a coffee service that, according to the scholar Reinhard W. Sänger, reflected the design ideas of van de Velde.26

While continuing as the metal workshop teacher in van de Velde’s school, Feinauer also studied to enhance his skills for designing and fabricating metal objects. He was among the twenty-five pupils for the Schriftkurus (lettering course) taught at the school by the influential German typographer Anna Simons from April 8 to May 12, 1912.27 It was probably at this time that Feinauer executed classical bronze plaques of the legendary Weimar figures Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) and Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805; figs. 7–8). The two men were renowned for working together to further ideas that launched the cultural and literary movement in Europe known as Weimar Classicism. The plaques, framed with classical ribbon-bound borders, show skillful modeling and exceptional sensitivity to the subjects through their cerebral mien.

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Fig. 7.  Albert Feinauer, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, ca. 1913. Mark (front): “Feinauer fec.” Bronze; D. 7⅞″. (Peter T. Feinauer collection.)

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Fig. 8.  Albert Feinauer, Friedrich von Schiller, ca. 1913. Mark (front): “Feinauer fec.” Bronze; D. 7⅞″. (Peter T. Feinauer collection.)

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In 1913, Feinauer became a member of the Deutsche Werkbund (German Work Federation, 1907–present), and pieces he produced for the Werkbund were included in their first exhibition in Cologne the following year.28 Peter Bruckmann (1865–1937), who as head of the Bruckmann firm encouraged originality and modern designs, was one of the Bund’s founders and its chairman from 1909 to 1919. Feinauer’s work at the exhibition may have included the aforementioned coffee service design he supplied to the Bruckmann firm in 1914. When Feinauer joined the Werkbund, he allied himself with the progressive ideas for design and production being implemented through lectures, publications, and the exchange of ideas within its broad-based membership. The roots of the Werkbund lay in the English arts and crafts movement and the teachings of William Morris; however, its impetus came as a government effort to advance German competition in international trade, and, unlike Morris, the Werkbund embraced machine production. Van de Velde, who served as one of the directors of the Bund, and Hermann Muthesius were the Werkbund’s two ideological spokespersons. Although they held conflicting views, it was not until the Werkbund’s 1914 exhibition in Cologne that they went head to head, with Muthesius adamant on the standardization of products as a national goal and van de Velde resolute on the value of individual artistic expression. With the onslaught of world war, however, this divisiveness—that also drew in the Werkbund’s members—was set aside. Although the Werkbund eschewed applied ornament, in practice it was rife with conflicting attitudes on modernism, aesthetics, style, and design.29 Still, the Werkbund’s mission to forge an alliance between craftsmen, designers, and industry in a productive and commercially viable way would guide Feinauer throughout his career.

Upon the outbreak of war in August 1914, Feinauer served in the military. He avoided the front lines because of his exceptional marksmanship and served by training sharpshooters throughout the war.30 After the war, both van de Velde’s School of Arts and Crafts and School for the Fine Arts underwent reorganization, and in April 1919, they became the Bauhaus under the leadership of Walter Gropius. Gropius later recalled, “When I came, the metal workshop didn’t even exist. Van de Velde’s entire workshop had been broken up, every piece sold and I entered completely empty rooms.”31 Feinauer and the bookbinding teacher Otto Dorfner offered to install and run their workshops at their own expense in accordance with the school’s artistic program.32 Both failed to gain a position. Dorfner, however, had the equipment necessary for his subject and became affiliated with the Bauhaus, where he operated his workshop privately. It is probable that Feinauer, unlike Dorfner, did not have the equipment at hand to run the metal workshop. The metal workshop was unable to renew operations until sometime between December 1919 and July 1920.33

Albert Feinauer as a Designer, a Silversmith, and a Maker of Jewelry

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With prospects for a return to his teaching position uncertain, Feinauer found employment in 1919 at the Georg Jensen Silversmithy in Copenhagen for a few years before resettling in Weimar in 1921. According to Peter Feinauer, his father’s role at Jensen was to furnish jewelry designs.34 While in Copenhagen, Feinauer displayed work in the 1919 New Jewelry Design exhibition sponsored by Bruckmann at the Landesmuseum in Stuttgart. A critical review of the exhibition characterized Feinauer as enjoying “unlimited possibilities to achieve good effect with ornamentation and truth to materials.”35 The years 1919 and 1920 were the busiest in Georg Jensen’s life; 1920 was the most prosperous year for the firm to date. However, 1921 brought Jensen serious financial problems as the economic crisis in Germany and elsewhere in Europe resulted in buyers postponing or canceling orders for Jensen silver.36 Feinauer probably returned to Germany early that year.

An oil portrait of Feinauer in Weimar during 1921 by his close friend and contemporary the Weimar painter Alexander von Szpinger (1889–1969), who had trained at van de Velde’s school, was entitled Der Lebenkünstler (one who makes an art of one’s life) and depicts Feinauer with a wistful expression (fig. 9).37 “Lebenkünstler” is an ambiguous German verbal noun that von Szpinger probably chose to characterize Feinauer, age thirty-five, both as one who maximizes life’s opportunities and as an accomplished survivor.

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Fig. 9.  Alexander von Szpinger, Der Lebenkünstler, portrait of Albert Feinauer, 1921. Oil on canvas; H. 30¼″, W. 26⅙″. (Peter T. Feinauer collection.)

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According to Peter Feinauer, after his father left Jensen and returned to Weimar he collaborated briefly with the noted Berlin animal sculptor August Gaul (1869–1921) when he made a masterful small bronze sculpture of a circus bear poised on a ball.38 Gaul died in October 1921, and it is probably at that time that Feinauer began making jewelry independently in Weimar.39 Feinauer collaborated until 1922 with Adolph von Mayrhofer (1864–1929), a well-established Munich silversmith known for sacramental silver and jewelry. Von Mayrhofer, like Feinauer, was a member of the Deutsche Werkbund. Both men exhibited silver at the 1922 Deutsche Gewerbeschau Exhibition in Munich, where Feinauer’s tea and coffee service was among Bruckmann’s exhibits (fig. 10).40 The handles of the tray recall those of a 1913 van de Velde tray, and the four vessels at left are reminiscent of Georg Jensen designs due to their multiple feet, spouts, and horizontal handles.41 The zigzag contours of the pedestal bowl to the right of the tea and coffee service is a stylistic motif spawned in Vienna and new to German jewelry and silver.42 A silver candelabrum—one in an edition of three—made by Feinauer about this time could be mistaken for Jensen silver (fig. 11). It is close in configuration to a candelabrum Jensen designed in 1919 and another one designed by Johan Rohde in 1920. All share arms that spring to frame an ornament before crossing to support candle cups. Moreover, the arms of the Jensen and Feinauer examples rise above a globular base.43

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Fig. 10.  Albert Feinauer, Peter Bruckmann and Söhne, tea and coffee service, ca. 1922. From Albert Haberton, “Silvernes Tafelgerät,” Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration 50 (September 1922): 369.

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Fig. 11.  Albert Feinauer, candelabrum, 1921–25. Mark (base): “A.Feinauer [and] Weimar [and] Germany [and] 900 [and crescent moon and crown].” Silver; H. 9½″. (Peter T. Feinauer collection.)

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Sometime between 1921 and 1923, Feinauer established a jewelry workshop in Weimar under the label “Weimar-Schmuck” (Weimar Jewelry), where production was marked with a cipher that combined a chaser’s hammer with the letters W and S with additional marks “A.Feinauer,” “Weimar,” “Germany,” “900 S,” and a pattern number. Weimar-Schmuck records in Peter Feinauer’s possession document Feinauer creating more than 100 different designs over five years for silver pendants and brooches, both with and without semiprecious stones and ivory.44 Many pieces of his jewelry are in the Jensen taste. One pendant is closely allied to Jensen jewelry and hollowware of 1914 and 1916, not only for its use of silver and cabochons but also for its composition combining open space enclosed by serial curled and beaded wires as a foil to a broad burnished leaf (fig. 12).45 Another pendant with chrysoprase and incised ivory is in a different aesthetic (fig. 13). It repeats the ornamental zigzag motif of Feinauer’s pedestal bowl (see fig. 10). Although this aesthetic was highly developed in German brooches and pendants, its roots were in the Wiener Werkstatte (Vienna workshop), especially with the artist Dagobert Peche (1887–1923) and in particular his lively silhouette ornament with sharp and pointed zigzagging angular patterns.46 Feinauer’s angel pendant testifies to his interest in working in ivory and the skill he brought to it (fig. 14). The pendant’s curled scrolls recall those of his “masterpiece” cup. The stars in the sky above the angel are a reminder of Peche’s practice of adding little gold stars to his drawings.47

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Fig. 12.  Albert Feinauer, pendant with chain, 1921–25. Mark (back): “15 [and] WS [enclosed in a square intersected with a chaser’s hammer] A.Feinauer/Weimar/Germany/900 S.” Silver and coral; pendant H. 2¼″, W. 1⅙″; chain L. 18¾″. (Peter T. Feinauer collection.)

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Fig. 13.  Albert Feinauer, pendant with chain, 1921–25. Mark (back): “30 [and] WS [enclosed in a square intersected with a chaser’s hammer]/Feinauer/Weimar/900 S.” Silver, ivory, and chrysoprase; pendant H. 2⅝″, W. 2 9/16″; chain L. 18½″. (Peter T. Feinauer collection.)

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Fig. 14.  Albert Feinauer, angel pendant with chain, 1921–25. Mark (back): “115/WS [enclosed in a square intersected with a chaser’s hammer]/A.Feinauer/Weimar/900 S/Germany.” Silver and ivory; pendant H. 1¾″, W. 1 ⅙″; chain L. 18¾″. (Peter T. Feinauer collection.)

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Although Feinauer’s Weimar-Schmuck was successful enough for him to engage an apprentice, Max Rieg (1899–1985), who was attending local evening classes at the recently established Bauhaus, Germany’s economic crisis would soon compel both to seek opportunity in the United States. Rieg eventually had an important American career, first in manufacturing and later as an independent designer and maker of silver and pewter.48 However, in the early 1920s, prospects for earning a living in Germany were pitiful. In 1923, more than 60 percent of the German population was unemployed or on short-time work, with the value of a mark in relation to the American dollar soaring from 7,260 marks in January to 4.2 trillion marks in December.49 Feinauer later recalled to his son that with the harsh economic conditions, he was unable to get a price for his silver hollowware that would even cover the cost of the silver. It was perhaps for this reason that Feinauer chose silver-plated brass for the tea and coffee service he made in Weimar about this time (fig. 15). Weimar’s conservative political climate and the withdrawal of local government financial support caused the Bauhaus to leave the city and relocate to Dessau in April 1925. A month later, driven by economic necessity, Feinauer arrived in the United States.

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Fig. 15.  Albert Feinauer, tea and coffee service, 1921–25. Mark (bottom): “T’O/840/Feinauer [and] WS [enclosed in a square intersected with a chaser’s hammer] Weimar/2.” Silver-plated brass and rosewood; coffeepot H. 9⅝″. (Peter T. Feinauer collection.)

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Albert Feinauer Immigrates to America

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By 1925, the postwar recession of 1920–22 was past, and American silver manufacturing was on the upswing.50 The number of silverware and plated ware establishments in the United States climbed from 169 in 1921 to 183 in 1925.51 The boom economy in the late 1920s supported a demand for luxury goods in America at a scale unknown before or since. In 1928, the nation’s silver consumption reached a record high, which a year later was exceeded by more than 10 percent.52

On May 9, 1925, Albert Feinauer, identified as a silversmith, age thirty-nine, arrived in New York from Bremen, Germany, destined for Worcester, Massachusetts, with Weimar, Germany, as his last permanent address.53 The reason for Feinauer’s journey to Worcester, Massachusetts, is unknown. However, in 1925 the research department of the New England Council reported that the New England area made 60 percent of all the sterling silver in the country.54 Worcester had no silver factories. However, it was not far from the shop of the important arts and crafts silversmith Arthur Stone (1847–1938) in Gardner to the north and was at the hub of main roads leading to large silver factories in Attleboro, North Attleboro, and Taunton, Massachusetts, as well as Providence, Rhode Island. After his arrival in 1925, the next documentation for Feinauer in the United States is the 1927 Wallingford, Connecticut, city directory, listing him as “Fienauer” and as employed by the Wallingford Silver Company. The 1928 and 1929 Wallingford city directories recorded him again as a designer at the Wallingford Silver Company.55

In 1928, with his employment apparently secure, Feinauer returned to Germany intent on finding a German wife.56 On December 2, he became engaged to the young Berlin artist Victoria Kienast (1906–87), whom he met in a Berlin dance hall, and commemorated their Christmas together a few weeks later by making a set of matching silver and ivory paper knives (fig. 16). Feinauer probably made them in anticipation of their exchange of letters during the brief separation that would follow their marriage. Their inscriptions testify to both Feinauer’s engraving skill and the artistry he learned in the lettering course he attended in 1912. Ali and Vikie, as they called each other, were wed February 3, 1929, at the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedäcjtjos Kirche in Berlin. Five days later, Feinauer, identified as a draftsman with Wallingford noted as his last permanent address, boarded a ship from Hamburg bound for New York and arrived there on February 19, 1929.57 At the request of her husband, Victoria Feinauer left for Weimar, where she completed a cooking course before her arrival in New York on May 10, 1929.58

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Fig. 16.  Albert Feinauer, paper knives, Germany, 1928. Engraving: one engraved “Vikie/24. 12. 28,” the other engraved “Ali/24. 12. 28.” Marks (back, both): “Feinauer/900 [crescent moon and crown].” Silver and ivory; L. (both) 7¼″. (Peter T. Feinauer collection.)

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Feinauer probably began working on the Barbour Silver Company’s Special Line either in 1928 before his marriage or in 1929 after his return to America on February 19. The Barbour Silver Company was one of seventeen plants operated by the International Silver Company (or Insilco). Known as “Factory A,” Barbour manufactured a varied line of International’s highest class of silver-plated hollowware.59 Three sets of linen-backed photographs document Barbour’s Special Line: two sets are in the International Silver Company Archives. One of them survives unbound in an envelope annotated “‘By Barbour’/Special Line/About 1930.” The other set is an album bound in pigskin covers embossed in gold “J. W. Hosdowich” for the company’s salesman Joseph W. Hosdowich (1899–1984). That set has an applied sticker with typescript “‘Factory A’ Barbour Silver 1929–1930.” A third set, also an album bound in pigskin, is owned by Peter Feinauer, who states that his father was the designer, and Peter owns examples of the objects.60 The lavish format of linen-backed photographs as opposed to paper illustrations, the format typically used by International’s sales representatives, was unusual. These sets illustrate some eighty-three different silver-plate pieces in twenty-six photographs, each annotated in typescript on the reverse with object descriptions that include their model number and price.61 The backs of the photographs have inscriptions noting the quantity of an object remaining in stock for 1930. The output included tea and coffee services, smoking and cocktail accessories, as well as candelabrum, vases, and console sets.62 Additional images of Special Line objects printed on paper bound with other Barbour Silver Company silver-plate wares also survive in the Insilco Archives.

The Special Line designs incorporate modern silver styles produced in Germany after World War I and to a lesser extent elsewhere in Europe. Feinauer’s Special Line fluted coffee set (Barbour no. 5350) evidences a distinct visible kinship to the iconic silver wine jug created by Christian Dell in 1922, the year Dell began as “master of craft” at the Bauhaus metal workshop (figs. 17–18).63 Feinauer probably knew the Dell jug firsthand because the metalworking community in Weimar in the early 1920s was small. Feinauer and Dell would have been acquainted in Weimar before the Bauhaus. Dell studied metalwork briefly in 1913 at van de Velde’s school, where Feinauer headed the metal workshop.64 If he did not know the Dell wine jug firsthand, Feinauer could have known Dell’s jug through its full-page illustration in the catalog for the 1927 international decorative arts exhibition held in Leipzig, which would have been available to Feinauer in International’s design library.65 Dell’s jug shared a number of similarities with the Special Line fluted coffee set (Barbour no. 5350) vessels: flared feet with flutes, a body formed of a sphere beneath a fluted cone, handles extending above the rims that connect to the bodies with a tab, and wood handles that connect to the tabs through sleeves secured by cone-shaped caps. The typescript on the reverse of the linen-backed photograph of the Special Line fluted coffee set (Barbour no. 5350) reads: “The original of this service was created by our designer and displayed over ten years ago in one of the large museums of Europe.” Attempts to identify the exhibition that included this service have been unsuccessful.66

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Fig. 17.  Albert Feinauer, Barbour Silver Company division of the International Silver Company, Special Line fluted coffee set, 1929–31. Engraving: “RVM.” Mark (bottom): “By/Barbour/5350.” Silver plate and Turkish boxwood; coffeepot H. 11¼″. (Private collection; photo, Tony DeCamillo.)

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Fig. 18.  Christian Dell, wine jug, Weimar, Germany, 1922. Silver and ebony. From M. R. J. Brinkgreve et al., Europäisches Kunstgewerbe Bericht über die Ausstellung Europäisches Kunstgewerbe 1927 (Leipzig: Seemann, 1928), 44. (E. A. Seemann Verlag of Seemann Henschel GmbH and Co. KG, Leipzig, Germany.)

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The distinctive primary-form geometry in designs of Feinauer, Dell, and other Bauhaus metalworkers, including Wolfgang Rössger (1909–87), Friedrich Marby (1905–84), Hans Przyrembel (1900–1945), Marianne Brandt (1893–1983), and Wolfgang Tümpel (1903–78), testify to the influence of the well-known theoretician and teacher Johannes Itten (1888–1967). Itten was a contemporary of Feinauer’s and the first head, or “master of form,” of the Bauhaus metal workshop before his ideas became unacceptable to Walter Gropius, who fired him in 1923. Dell began at the Bauhaus in April 1922 as master of craft in the metal workshop, while Itten was the workshop’s master of form.67 An exercise in Itten’s basic course was to construct a vessel out of a sphere, a cylinder, and a cone. This use of geometrical forms is seen in Dell’s 1922 jug and in both Feinauer’s Special Line fluted coffee set (Barbour no. 5350) and his Special Line cubist coffee set (Barbour no. 5521; fig. 19). Such footed sphere-and-cylinder pots were part of a long German tradition, as seen in Rhenish ceramics from 100 to 300 years earlier.68 Spawned by Itten’s lessons, the Bauhaus sphere-and-cylinder-form pots, typically featuring a long conjoined spout, were echoed elsewhere in contemporary design.69

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Fig. 19.  Albert Feinauer, Barbour Silver Company division of the International Silver Company, Special Line cubist coffee set, 1929–31. Mark (bottom): “By/Barbour/5521.” Silver plate and cane; coffeepot H. 11¼″. (Private collection; photo, Tony DeCamillo.)

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A significant difference between the Special Line cubist coffee set (Barbour no. 5521) and Bauhaus services, such as those by Dell, Rössger, Marby, Przyrembel, Brandt, and Tümpel, is the former’s use of repetitive components throughout the set.70 In the Special Line cubist coffee set (Barbour no. 5521), the coffeepot and sugar bowl have the same foot component. In addition, the upper bodies of the coffeepot and the cream pitcher duplicate one another at the rim and pouring spout, and the cream pitcher and sugar bowl handles have repetitive elements at their body junctions.71 In this, Feinauer was responding to American production concerns. No Bauhaus metalwork has been identified as employing repetitive use of standard forms; however, in the early 1920s, the Bauhaus ceramist Theodor Bogler (1897–1968) created different teapots from a shared set of handle, pot, and lid molds—a phenomenon that may have resulted because this Bauhaus workshop’s origins were in a factory as well as remote from Weimar.72 However, the Weimar Bauhaus metal workshop lacked machine-powered tools necessary to support batch fabrication. The design approach in the Bauhaus metal workshop for a silver tea and coffee service was to focus on each object individually as apart from the service as an ensemble. Rössger recalled, “Production generally began with a workshop discussion which was always led by [Lázló] Moholy-Nagy … about the function of the object to be produced … to make a tea or coffee service, then we discussed in detail the methods used in each part of the world for preparing coffee or tea. … We were chiefly concerned with making parts of a service, such as pots, sugar bowls, cream jugs, … etc.”73

In contrast, market demand drove American silver manufacturers, who had a long tradition of producing sets that might include items such as candlesticks, centerpieces, and bread trays to engender consumer interest in acquiring the matching pieces. This approach, of course, was in tandem with maximizing the repetition of a pattern’s component parts or trimmings throughout the ensemble in order to cut costs. Use of jigs, templates, and molds to create repetitive parts for American consumer goods, including decorative arts objects, is widely apparent in feet, handles, knobs, and other trimmings for silver-plate hollowware dating back to the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, three compact “Dinette” sets introduced in 1928 and created by International’s staff designer Gene Theobald had interchangeable handles, knobs, and bodies within each set; in fact, the covered creamer and covered sugar bowl in the “Diament” pattern set are virtually identical and difficult to distinguish since the creamer lacks a spout. In 1928, the artist-designer Ilonka Karasz (1896–1981) created a brilliant scheme for a tea and coffee service produced by Paye and Baker Manufacturing Company in North Attleboro, Massachusetts. These vessels not only have interchangeable covers, finials, and handle tabs but also use the same extrusion at different heights to form the vessel bodies. In 1934, designs for Poole Silver Company by the German émigré silversmith and industrial designer Peter Müller-Munk incorporated reverse-fitting dyes that alternatively formed a center bowl, nut dishes, and candlesticks.74 Although such efficiency was apparently not relevant to the Bauhaus metal workshop, a main concern, especially under the tutelage of Lázló Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946), was that designs derive from geometric forms. It was this stylistic aspect and absence of ornament that both united the parts of a Bauhaus tea and coffee set and gave each piece its widely acknowledged beauty and sculptural power.

The geometric forms of Feinauer’s Special Line cubist coffee set (Barbour no. 5521) evoke Bauhaus metalwork, but its chased cubist ornament of random serial right-angle steps intersecting arcs, circles, and shaded rectangles does not conform to the abolition of ornament dominant among Bauhaus metal tableware (fig. 20).75 The Deutscher Werkbund also eschewed applied ornament, which was amply demonstrated in its large 1924 exhibition Form Ohne Ornament (Form without Ornament). Itten’s teaching method encouraged self-expression, motivating some of his students to feature ornamental chasing in their work.76 However, ornament and individual expression ceased in Bauhaus metalwork when Gropius replaced Itten with Moholy-Nagy as the metal workshop’s master of form.77 Gropius abandoned his earlier interest in reviving craftsmanship and charged Moholy-Nagy with creating prototypes for industrial production. As this later approach developed, especially after 1925 when the Bauhaus moved to Dessau, a manufacturing center, it became the widespread perception equating the Bauhaus with progressive modern style.78

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Fig. 20.  Detail of cubist coffeepot in figure 19.

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Feinauer’s chased ornament was spawned by artists a generation earlier as seen in the serial right-angle steps, arcs, and parallel-line shading of Pablo Picasso’s 1910 charcoal drawing “Female Nude.”79 This type of cubist ornament, as opposed to triangles and other angular shapes, is rare in American design before 1930.80 Ornamental chasing was one of the skills Feinauer perfected as both a practitioner and an instructor. Here, he has artfully configured it to complement the form it graces: a small circle for the sphere on the pot’s finial, a C shape for the pot’s handle, and a series of parallel lines that repeat those of the cane wrapping on the pot’s handle. In contrast to the doctrinaire teachings of the Bauhaus, Feinauer put into manufacture an Itten-inspired composition of form with ornament. Further, Feinauer criticized the silver from the Bauhaus for its functional defects, noting that designs were top heavy and had a tendency to tip over.81

Pouring vessel designs by Dell are echoed in the pitcher among Feinauer’s bar wares (Barbour nos. 5189 and 6733; fig. 21). Dell had been designing pouring vessels with long conjoined spouts since 1926, but around 1929 he elevated the spout and its flared rim above the body.82 While the Dell pieces have a novel composition and a luxury quality advanced through the handwork seen in their subtly planished surfaces, the Barbour pitcher has an imposing stance with its more defined cylinder and its flawless machine-spun surface, playing off the vertical fluting of its cast inset base.

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Fig. 21.  Albert Feinauer, Barbour Silver Company and Meriden Silver Company divisions of the International Silver Company, Special Line water pitcher, beakers, cocktail shaker, ice tub, and cups, 1929–31. Mark (water pitcher, bottom): “Barbour/5189.” Silver plate and white Catalin; H. 10″. Marks (beakers, bottom): one marked “Barbour/5189,” the other marked “Meriden S.P. Co. [in arch surround]/[lion holding vase]/International S.Co. [at base of arch surround]/5189.” Silver plate; H. 5″. Marks (cocktail shaker): “Barbour/6733” (bottom) and “PAT’D JAN 11-1927” (stopper). Silver plate and white Catalin; H. 11¼″. Mark (ice tub, bottom): “Barbour/6733.” Silver plate; H. 5⅝″. Mark (cups, bottom): “Barbour/6733.” Silver plate; H. 3″. (Private collection; photo, Tony DeCamillo.)

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Unlike Dell, Feinauer brought the discipline required by industrial production to the pitcher design, making its component parts interchangeable. The foot, body, and handle of the cocktail shaker replicate those of the pitcher, while the handles of the ice tub replicate, without the wicker insulation, the coffeepot in the Special Line cubist coffee set (Barbour no. 5521; see fig. 19). The remaining bar wares likewise incorporate interchangeable parts.83

Some pieces in Barbour’s Special Line, such as a centerpiece and candlesticks (Barbour nos. 6207 and 6896), reveal Feinauer reworking the designs he created before his arrival in the United States (fig. 22). The flaring arms of both the centerpiece and the candlesticks rise from a base that is a distilled version of the base of Feinauer’s Weimar candelabrum, which in turn, owes a debt to Georg Jensen (see fig. 11). The linear arms with curled ends echo his masterpiece cup. According to Barbour’s typescript for the centerpiece and candlesticks, the design represents “nature … personified by buds about to blossom.”84

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Fig. 22.  Albert Feinauer, Barbour Silver Company and Meriden Silver Company divisions of the International Silver Company, Special Line centerpiece set, 1929–31. Mark (centerpiece, bottom): “Meriden S.P. Co. [in arch surround]/[lion holding vase]/International S. Co. [at base of arch surround]/6207.” Silver plate and black Catalin; H. 10″. Mark (candlesticks, bottom): “Barbour/6896.” Silver plate; H. 7″. (Private collection; photo, Tony DeCamillo.)

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Feinauer’s Special Line designs also show historicist stylistic influences, despite the overriding concern for efficient industrial manufacture. Earlier German tea and coffee service vessels in the neoclassical revival style underlie the panel-and-flute footprint and the domed lid of the Special Line Catalin coffee service (Barbour no. 5345; fig. 23). A notable example exhibited at the 1910 Brussels Exposition is the silver coffee and tea service with adventurine finials designed in 1909–10 by the Darmstadt architect-designer Albin Müller (1871–1941) for the German silver manufacturer Koch and Bergfeld (1829–present; fig. 24). The technical refinements of the Barbour service over the Müller service merit comment. Unlike the Müller design, the bodies of the Special Line Catalin service vessels (Barbour no. 5345), while different in height, are from the same nickel silver extrusion and therefore have the same footprint. This feature and the interchangeable lids for the coffeepot and the sugar bowl make the Catalin service (Barbour no. 5345) notable as a design conceived with machine manufacturing in mind. Distinctive features of these Special Line vessels that advance their stateliness are their feet, whose convex scrolls offer a counterpoint to the vertical flutes of the body. These feet echo those on the vessels and tray of a van de Velde tea and coffee service of 1913.85 Apart from the footprint and the lids, the most striking difference between the Müller and Catalin service vessels is the latter’s “Ivory Catalin” handles and finials.86 Ivory handles for coffeepots or teapots often adorn German and Austrian silver but are a luxury component rare in America. At the time, Catalin, like Bakelite, was a novel plastic material employed by silver manufacturers as handles and knobs. Its use was a design cue taken from colorful semiprecious stones recently used by French silversmiths to accent and embellish silver. The notion of using the Catalin in the finials to enclose silver ornament is evidence of Feinauer’s fertile imagination and ability to revitalize a traditional design. The cubist aspect of this ornament recalls the liveliness of Wiener Werkstatte (Vienna Workshop) designs that Feinauer often brought to his jewelry.

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Fig. 23.  Albert Feinauer, Special Line Catalin coffee service (Barbour no. 5345) “‘Factory A,’ Barbour Silver, 1929–1930,” binder. Silver plate and white Catalin; coffeepot H. 9¾″. (International Silver Company Archives, Meriden Historical Society, Meriden, Connecticut.)

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Fig. 24.  Albin Müller, Koch and Bergfeld, Bremen, Germany, tea and coffee service, 1909–10. Silver and semiprecious stones; coffeepot H. 6⅞″. (Bremer Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Bremen, Germany.)

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A console set that comprises candelabra and a centerpiece (Barbour no. 6895 and 5740) reflects vanguard German design, especially in its series of three discs on the finials atop the winged spheres in the candelabra (fig. 25). The machine age is celebrated with a sphere and water white glass discs that convey an aerodynamics whereby the arms of the candle sockets seem poised for rotation and liftoff. Rotation is also implied by the arms of the swastika seen on the winged spheres of the candelabrum and the body of the centerpiece. Candlelight, in turn, would complement the swastika’s ancient association with the sun. In the late 1920s, the swastika was a symbol known in Germany for its emerging National Socialist party but not then associated with the Nazis in American eyes.87 The typescript on the back of the Special Line photograph advanced its traditional association, noting, “The applied ornamentation is a character from the Ancient Runic alphabet and is a symbol of Good Luck and Good Fortune.” The remarkable ornamental cubist feet are a rarity in American silver but not so in German silver.88 The centerpiece’s removable screen for holding flowers was a design component used earlier in five centerpieces designed by Alfred G. Kintz for International’s “Spirit of Today” sterling hollowware series, introduced in 1928.89

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Fig. 25.  Albert Feinauer, Barbour Silver Company division of the International Silver Company, Special Line candelabra and centerpiece with double flower holder, 1929–31. Mark (candelabra, bottom): “By/Barbour/6895.” Silver plate and glass; H. 9″. Mark (centerpiece, bottom): “By Barbour/5740.” Silver plate; H. 8⅛″. (Private collection; photo, Tony DeCamillo.)

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In addition to Germany, Denmark, and Austria, Feinauer also assimilated vanguard ideas in silver design from France. One of the Special Line’s sleek Preference chests for cigarettes evokes the bold compositions of the celebrated silversmith Jean Puiforcat (fig. 26). Its ornamental handle appears to take its cue from a 1928 Puiforcat biscuit box, and its vertical fluting recalls a 1925 Puiforcat table lamp.90 Puiforcat’s box appeared in Good Furniture in June 1929, and Puiforcat created the lamp for the well-known New York store Saks Fifth Avenue. This Preference chest was one of three closely related designs that Feinauer created for Barbour that share several component parts. It was published in the Ladies’ Home Journal in December 1930.91

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Fig. 26.  Albert Feinauer, Barbour Silver Company division of the International Silver Company, Special Line Preference chest for cigarettes, 1929–31. Marks: “Barbour” within an oval “The/Preference/Trade Mark-Reg.U.S.Pat.Off./Chest/5085” (bottom); applied oval label imprinted “Old Colony Distributing Co. Boston Mass./Patent Applied For” (cedrela interior); “The/Preference/Trade Mark-Reg.U.S.Pat.Off./Chest/Made In U.S.A.” (around the border). Silver plate, white Catalin, and cedrela; L. 10″. (Private collection; photo, Tony DeCamillo.)

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The debut of the Special Line coincided with the 1929 Wall Street crash, an occurrence that compromised its commercial success. It had minimal exposure in the press and no advertising, which was unusual for International. These circumstances may have resulted from economic constraints and perhaps International’s waning commitment to the line. International closed its Barbour factory in March 1931 and reported a net loss for the year of $1,464,906.92 However, some items in Barbour’s Special Line bear the mark of Meriden Silver Plate Company, Factory E (see figs. 21–22). The 1932 Meriden City directory lists Fienauer [sic] as a designer for International’s subsidiary, the Meriden Britannia Company, Factory E. Still, numerous objects in the Special Line sold out, although in December 1932, others were discontinued.93 In 1932, International was in a slump. It reported a net loss of $1,567,238 and continued to consolidate production in Meriden with the closing of its Holmes and Edwards plant, Factory N, producers of high-end silver-plate flatware.94

In 1932, Feinauer created his last known design for International. He received patent 87,330 assigned to International for a flatware design produced by International’s subsidiary William Rogers Manufacturing Company, Factory H, as their “Plaza” pattern flatware (fig. 27).95 Its distinctive feature was the arch flanked by curves on its handle end, a motif seen earlier in Feinauer’s design vocabulary. In 1933, International realized a net profit for the year of $242,623; however, that was after the closing in January of its Derby Silver Company subsidiary, Factory B.

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Fig. 27.  Albert Feinauer, showing (right to left): William Rogers Manufacturing Company division of the International Silver Company, “Plaza” pie server, 1932. Engraving (front): “F.” Marks: “[anchor] Rogers [anchor] I S [each letter enclosed in a rectangle]” (handle); “Insico/Stainless” (blade). Silver plate and stainless steel; L. 9⅞″; Gorham Company, “Christina” teaspoon, 1935. Engraving (front): “L/L/J.” Mark (back): “Gorham Sterling Pat. 1935.” Silver; L. 6 11/16″. Gorham Company, “Remembrance” teaspoon, 1935. Inscription (back): “Balt./MD./“M/I/L/L/E/R/B/R/O/S.” Mark (back): “Gorham Ep Pat. Triple Plate.” Silver plate; L. 6″. Gorham Company, “Eventide” teaspoon, 1936. Mark (back): “Gorham Sterling Pat. 1936 R.” Silver; L. 5 13/16″. (Private collection; photo, Tony DeCamillo.)

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The deepening Great Depression in the early 1930s affected the nation’s silver industries and may have contributed to Feinauer’s move to Providence to work for the Gorham Manufacturing Company.96 In 1934, the Meriden City directory recorded Feinauer as removed to Providence.97 American silver factories had a long tradition of hiring staff designers from their competitors. Feinauer may well have responded to an offer by Gorham since the company soon put his flatware designs into production.

Albert Feinauer and the Gorham Manufacturing Company

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Evidence that modern silver designs were making modest headway with American consumers in the mid-1930s is indicated by their growing availability from a few leading silver manufacturers; however, Gorham was not among them. Notable spare and streamlined patterns were introduced by Lurelle Guild and Frederick Stark for International; Robert Locher for Rogers, Lunt and Bowlen; and Belle Kogan for Reed and Barton.98 Gorham, however, showed a reluctance to introduce modern silver designs in the 1930s. There was reason to be wary. The company’s ambitious collaboration with the Danish émigré silversmith Erik Magnussen (1884–1961) in the late 1920s was commercially unsuccessful, as was the ill-timed merger of its retail store in New York with Black, Starr, and Frost in a redesigned building, which opened just as Wall Street crashed. In the years that followed, Gorham, like other silver manufacturers, suffered a calamitous loss in consumer patronage. In 1932, Gorham slashed the prices of its silver 40 percent, and it was the first year since 1923 that Gorham’s operations showed a loss.99 Revival styles dominated Gorham silver during the Great Depression. A 1934 article entitled “American Silver: Its Contemporary Art” illustrated Gorham’s “George I” pattern coffee service and Chippendale-inspired dishes alongside silver hollowware by International and the Watson Company, which was judged in the article as modern or modernistic.100

Gorham was unwilling to compete with its peers in museum displays of contemporary designs. Unlike most of the country’s large silver manufacturers, Gorham rarely participated in the many 1930s museum exhibitions that included contemporary silverware.101 When the Brooklyn Museum was seeking participation in what remains the largest exhibition of American silver ever held, Gorham’s president and general manager, Edmund C. Mayo, responded to the invitation by museum director Philip N. Youtz by referring the request to Rupert A. Nock, “Director of Design.” Two days later, in his response to Youtz declining participation, Nock identified himself using the more mundane title “Merchandise Manager,” suggesting that merchandising then trumped design at Gorham.102

In 1932, the home furnishing trade press again underscored Germany’s lead in bringing modern art to industry, and to keep current Gorham probably needed someone familiar with modern German design, such as Feinauer.103 In 1935 Feinauer’s wage at Gorham was $50.00 per week. This was at the high end for designers and would have meant earning $1.25 an hour for the silver industry’s typical forty-hour week, which was equivalent to an amount paid to a workman of exceptional skill such as a die sinker.104 Reconstructing Feinauer’s contributions to Gorham’s output in the approximately twenty-two years he worked there is challenging. With a few notable exceptions, it was the custom for American silver manufacturers in Feinauer’s time to keep the work of their staff designers anonymous.105 Still, one documented area is flatware, for which silver manufacturers routinely took out patents because of the large investment required for fabricating dies. Feinauer received three patents for flatware designs at Gorham in 1934: patent 94,023 for the sterling flatware pattern “Christina,” introduced in 1935 along with the alternates, the sparely ornamented “Christina, engraved, Feather Edge” and the allover ornamented “Christina, engraved, Old English Scroll.”106 He received patent 95,812 in 1935 for the silver-plate pattern “Remembrance,” and in 1936 patent 98,925 for the sterling flatware pattern “Eventide” (see fig. 27).

At best, these patterns were only somewhat modern. Christina lacked ornament, and the decorative elements of Eventide and Remembrance were spare and nonhistoricist. All of them, along with Feinauer’s Plaza pattern for International, answered to the early 1930s consumer preference for “simplicity” in household furnishings.107 Still, in Vogue for December 15, 1936, Christina was among seven sterling flatware patterns labeled as “modern,” as opposed to another seven labeled “ornamental.”108 Christina and Eventide were among the few flatware designs that Gorham illustrated as full pages in their 1930s annual reports.109 However, in 1939, Gorham put Christina on its inactive list.110

Albert Feinauer, Gorham, and the New York World’s Fair of 1939

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Identifying Feinauer’s contributions to Gorham’s hollowware production is problematic. Some Gorham silver from 1934 and 1935, including a paneled coffee set and a salad bowl with abstract leaf-and-bubble ornament, departed from period styles.111 In the late 1930s, Gorham also produced a range of bowls, compotes, and candelabra that emulated silver from Georg Jensen.112 Feinauer had firsthand familiarity with Jensen’s designs, but none of these can be attributed to Feinauer at this time.

Despite Gorham’s caution in furthering modernism in its silver production, this position did not fully govern its entries at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Black, Starr, and Frost-Gorham agreed to install a display in the fair’s House of Jewels alongside the competitive offerings of Tiffany and Company and Cartier. While most of the silver pieces Gorham highlighted in its exhibits at the fair were historicist designs, a cocktail set comprising a double-spouted shaker, tray, and twelve cups was conspicuously modern (fig. 28).113 The same was true for a coffee set with ivory handles comprising a coffeepot, cream pitcher, sugar bowl, and tray (see below). Although Gorham’s display was overshadowed by Tiffany’s extravagant showing of bold late-in-the-day moderne and streamline-style silver that drew on Edgar Brandt ironwork or machine age motifs, these two Gorham services are striking for their elegance attuned to the concurrent shift from geometric forms to an organic style.114 Gorham employed eight designers on the eve of the fair, but among them only Feinauer had the requisite skills and experience to conceive designs that exhibit the thorough command of the modern aesthetic that the two sets exemplify.115 Distinguishing elements in their designs are characteristic of his earlier work and provide the basis for attributing the two sets to him.

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Fig. 28.  Attributed to Albert Feinauer, Gorham Company, cocktail set, New York World’s Fair, 1939. (Gorham Company Archive, John Hay Library, Brown University.)

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From his apprentice masterpiece onward, Feinauer favored a group of motifs that reoccur in his designs. The profile of an arch flanked by curves occurs on the handle terminal of his Plaza pattern flatware. The finials and tray handles of his Special Line octagonal coffee service (Barbour no. 5346) are also seen on the cocktail shaker’s stopper (fig. 29). The applied central wire that follows the curved contours of the vessel and tray handles of the Special Line octagonal coffee service (Barbour no. 5346) is a distinctive design device of Feinauer’s and one that recurs on the shaker, tray, and cups of the cocktail set.116 In addition, the scroll handles of the cocktail tray are reminiscent of the scrolls on the sides of his angel pendant, while the spout ends of the shaker are similar to the Special Line pitcher (Barbour no. 5189; see fig. 21). Small spheres are part of Feinauer’s design vocabulary. The spheres that punctuate the ends of the three handles on the shaker and tops of the cocktail cups appeared earlier in Feinauer’s coral pendant (see fig. 12). Feinauer probably learned their ornamental usefulness from his association with Georg Jensen, who excelled in mastering their decorative potential.

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Fig. 29.  Albert Feinauer, Special Line octagonal coffee service (Barbour no. 5346), “‘Factory A,’ Barbour Silver, 1929–1930,” binder. Silver plate; coffeepot H. 8¼″. (International Silver Company Archives, Meriden Historical Society, Meriden, Connecticut.)

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Gorham’s 1939 New York World’s Fair coffee set also has distinguishing elements that correspond to Feinauer’s earlier designs (fig. 30). The engraved graduating arcs rising on the bodies of the vessels have precedent in Feinauer hollowware ornament such as his Special Line centerpiece and candlesticks (Barbour nos. 6207 and 6896; see fig. 22). The configuration of the scallop border of the tray and the serial scallops of the ivory handles both recall Feinauer’s coral pendant (see fig. 12). The overall swoop of the coffeepot’s handle is similar to that of the Special Line Catalin coffeepot (Barbour no. 5345; see fig. 23). Its short spout recalls his Weimar coffeepot (see fig. 15). The fluted pedestal supports recall those for Feinauer’s Special Line fluted coffee set (Barbour no. 5350; see fig. 17).117 Together, these idiosyncrasies offer recognizable evidence of Feinauer as the creator of the coffee set’s design.

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Fig. 30.  Attributed to Albert Feinauer, Gorham Company, coffee set, New York World’s Fair, 1939. (Gorham Company Archive, John Hay Library, Brown University.)

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Retaining Ties to Progressive German Design

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In 1935, as Adolph Hitler was coming to power, Feinauer became a U.S. citizen; however, he continued the professional ties he forged in Germany. In 1937, when he learned that Walter Gropius was joining the faculty of Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, he renewed his acquaintance with Gropius in a letter with a postscript reminder, “I was a teacher at the arts and crafts school in Weimar.”118 The same year, Feinauer was among those invited by László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946), master of form at the Bauhaus metal workshop from 1923 to 1928, to the inaugural events for the New Bauhaus in Chicago, where Moholy-Nagy was the founding director.119 The invitation acknowledged Feinauer’s place among the German community of progressive design practitioners. Germany’s influence on modern American design by this time was in the hands of refugees fleeing Nazi suppression.

During World War II, Feinauer registered with the draft. However, when Gorham was making war materials, the company thought it better to have him—because of his heritage and accent—continue his employment at home, where he set up a studio on his back porch. Feinauer continued to design flatware. According to Peter Feinauer, Gorham’s sterling pattern “Lily of the Valley,” introduced in 1950, was designed by his father and was the flatware his family used (fig. 31). Although the pattern was patented by Gorham’s design director at the time, James Russell Price—a practice then common in silver manufacturing—its serial stem-and-blossom motif is an observable variation on Feinauer’s coral pendant (see fig. 12).120 The motif’s similarity to Jensen ornament is also a response to the prevailing design influence from Scandinavia during the late 1930s into the post–World War II period. It was only in the 1960s, after progressive Bauhaus design came to new American office buildings, that the sleek machinelike designs started to become widely accepted in the formal rooms of American homes.

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Fig. 31.  Attributed to Albert Feinauer, “Lily of the Valley” flatware pattern, patent 142,205 assigned by James Russell Price, Cranston, Rhode Island, to Gorham Manufacturing Company, 1945. (U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.)

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Feinauer was among those friends and pupils of Richard Riemerschmid (1868–1957), one of the founders of the Deutsche Werkbund, asked to contribute to a Festschrift honoring Riemerschmid on his eighty-fifth birthday in 1953. His contribution, which illustrated his apprentice masterpiece cup, reiterated the Werkbund precepts of balancing artistically developed form with fitness to purpose—in combination with an artist’s ability to work with industry—and this resultant “industrial art” was a specifically twentieth-century development.121

Peter Feinauer recalled that his father shared a space off the company’s main design room with Price and how with his accented and less fluent English he admired Price’s way with words and speaking.122 Peter Feinauer has stated that his father had to get used to the idea that when he worked for a manufacturer, as opposed to being self-employed, he and his work became anonymous.123 Feinauer died suddenly on October 18, 1955, while still employed at Gorham and just one year before he would have been pensioned.124 In 1957, partly because of her reduced financial circumstances, Victoria Feinauer, accompanied by her teenage son, returned to Berlin.

Conclusion

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Albert Feinauer had a remarkable early career as a craftsman, designer, teacher, and artist that gained him widespread individual recognition. The 1920s economic crisis in Germany brought about his emigration to the United States, where his previous accomplishments enabled him to secure positions with the nation’s leading silver manufacturers. Feinauer’s first efforts were influenced by arts and crafts movement practitioners, but later, having adopted the philosophy of the Deutsche Werkbund and the Bauhaus, he forged a new life in America as a designer and craftsman allied to industry.

In the early modern period of American silver, 1925–40, Feinauer contributed noteworthy work. He was among the handful of émigrés trained abroad whom American silver manufacturers engaged to develop modern designs and one of two who joined company staff. However, the other staff designer, Erik Magnussen at Gorham, was in a position vastly more elevated than Feinauer’s at International. Others offered designs as consultants. In addition to Karasz and Müller-Munk, they included Alfons Bach, Belle Kogan, Eliel Saarinen, Elsa Tennhardt, and Kem Weber.125 With the exception of Magnussen, Feinauer brought more objects with modern design ideas into production than any of these designers. The stylistic range he introduced—Vienna and Germany, Jensen, Bauhaus, and Puiforcat—also was broader.

Feinauer had the advantage of factory training and years of experience, compared to the much younger metalworkers at the Bauhaus, who, before 1926, lacked machine-powered tools, and he eclipsed the Bauhaus efforts to create silver tableware prototypes for industrial production.126 Indeed, it is probable that among designers bringing modernism to American silver in 1925–40, Feinauer had more designs based on interchangeable components in order to advance their industrial production. His silver designs incorporated progressive ideas from Germany and elsewhere in Europe with unusual imagination, sprit, and refinement, and when developing styles originated by others, he advanced them with verve and wit. While Feinauer’s known, and herein attributed, designs for the Gorham Manufacturing Company are elegant, several of his Special Line designs for the International Silver Company are among the most direct assimilation of progressive German design and Bauhaus ideology produced in American silver. The discovery of this previously unrecognized designer and craftsman offers important insights into the advance of modernism in American design.

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MoMA: 1935 to 1950

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