Lilly Reich

Lilly Reich (16 June 1885 – 14 December 1947) was a German designer of textiles, furniture, interiors, and exhibition spaces. She was a close collaborator with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe for more than ten years during the Weimar period in the 1920s and early 1930s. Reich was an important figure in the early Modern Movement in architecture and design. Her fame was posthumous, as the significance of her contribution to the work of Mies van der Rohe and others with whom she collaborated only became clear through the research of later historians of the field.

Biography

Reich was born in Berlin on 16 June 1885. In 1908, she put her embroidery training to use when she went to Vienna to work for the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshop) of Josef Hoffmann, a visual arts production company of designers, artists, and architects. She returned to Berlin by 1911. There she began to design furniture and clothing. She also worked as a shop window decorator at this time. The following year she joined the Deutscher Werkbund, or German Work Federation, a group similar to the Vienna Workshop whose purpose was to help improve competitiveness of German companies in the global market. That year she designed a sample working-class flat in the Berlin Gewerkschaftshaus, or Trade Union House. It received much praise for the clarity and functionalism of the furnishings. She contributed work to the Werkbund exhibition in Cologne in 1914. In 1920, Lilly became the first woman elected to the governing board of the Deutscher Werkbund.

From 1924 to 1926, she worked at the Messeamt, or Trade Fair Office, in Frankfurt am Main. There, she was in charge of organizing and designing trade fairs. It was there that she met Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, vice president of the Deutscher Werkbund. This sparked a period of involvement of furniture for van der Rohe as the two collaborated on many projects together. In 1927, the two worked on "Die Wohnung" in Stuttgart for the Werkbund. She designed many interiors for this exhibition including "Wohnraum in Spiegelglas" ("living space in mirror glass"). During her career she designed store windows, exhibition displays, and fashion. In 1929 she became the artistic director for the German contribution to the Barcelona World Exposition, where van der Rohe designed his world-famous pavilion. This is where the famous Barcelona chair made its first appearance. This pavilion was considered the highlight of their design efforts.

In 1932, Reich was asked by van der Rohe to teach at the Bauhaus and direct the interior design workshop. Her tenure was short-lived as the Bauhaus was closed in 1933 by the Nazis, who referred to it an “oriental palace” and “synagogue” filled with “Bolshevists” and “cultural Marxists” dedicated to degenerate art.

After the Second World War, she briefly taught at the Universität der Künste in Berlin but was forced to resign due to ill health. She died two years later in 1947 in Berlin.

There are streets named after Lilly Reich in the German cities of Munich, Hildesheim, and Ingolstadt.

Career

Reich started her career as a designer of textiles and women's clothes. This experience was to be formative for her – giving her a particular interest in contrasting textures and materials, as well as specific skills with regard to the use of textiles in furniture.

She worked in the studio of Josef Hoffmann in Vienna from 1908. Hoffmann was a celebrated modernist designer, responsible for designs such as th
Kubus chair
(1918), Cabinet (circa 1915), Koller (1911), and Broncia (1912) chairs.

In 1914, Reich converted her studio to a dressmaker's shop and maintained it through the duration of World War I. In 1912, two seminal events helped establish her reputation as an influential designer and exhibition organizer. First, she designed well-received interiors for a worker's apartment and two stores for the Lyzeum-Klub exhibition ''Die Frau in Haus und Beruf'' (Woman at Home and at Work). That same year, she was elected to membership in the German Werkbund, an organization founded in 1907 that aimed to ally art and industry as a means to improve German-made products and designs. The Werkbund sponsored lectures for shopkeepers and consumers as well as sought the assistance of museums to influence public taste through exhibitions. On 25 October 1920, Reich was formally recognized by her peers when she was named to the Board of Directors of Deutsche Werkbund. She was the first woman to be appointed to the Werkbund's governing board. It was her responsibility to plan and curate design exhibits hosted by the Werkbund and intended to promote German designers both in Germany and abroad.

In 1921–22, Reich organized and prepared two large exhibitions to be shown at the Newark Museum in Newark, New Jersey

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