Kugelhaus Dresden

On the north side of Dresden Hauptbahnhof on Wiener Platz there’s an unexceptional low rise modern office block in which is embedded a tribute to one the city’s great lost landmark buildings - the Kugelhaus.  Designed as a spherical building by Munich architect, Peter Birkenholz for the 1930 International Health Exhibition in Dresden’s Grossen Garten park.  Inspired by the unbuilt visions of Claude-Nicolas Ledoux it was quickly adopted as an emblem of the city and hosted a series of exhibitions of technology and engineering.  By the mid-1930s as the novelty faded, it fell out of favour.  Maintenance was expensive and the recently ascendant Nazis took exception to it.  When an operator could not be found it was demolished in 1938. It was Dresden’s misfortune that it fell under the control of an especially brutal Gauleiter, Martin Mutschmann.  The preservation of traditional Saxon arts and crafts was Mutschmann’s obsession when he wasn’t occupied with matters of torture and execution, suggesting he was even less receptive to Modernism than the average Nazi.  It remains the case that spherical buildings always come with problems and often have a short life. Had it been spared by the Nazi culture warriors, it would have been very unlikely to have survived the Allied firestorms of February 1945.  There’s an additional tribute to the Kugelhaus in the form of a spherical cinema in the lobby of the Volkswagen Transparent Factory which now stands on the same spot.

 

More Tea From Lipton’s

Following up a post from July 2007 - more examples of postcards publicising the availability of Lipton’s Tea.  Lipton made full use of traditional iconography of imperialism - a team of Indian elephants advancing to market escorted by exotic turbaned outriders. Lipton’s plantations in India and Ceylon formed an empire within an empire with a workforce of tens of thousands toiling in the fields and factories to ensure the British public was supplied with all the consolations of a nice cup of tea.  Tea drinking became embedded in the soul of Victorian Britain and to meet the ever increasing consumer demand the industry mechanised the processing and packaging to cut costs while promoting a branded product with forceful advertising campaigns.  Picking the tea was done by hand and Lipton’s took pride in offering visual proof of the scale of their operations.  Enormous crowds of anonymous labourers were rounded up in front of the camera - some were deployed in formation to spell out the hallowed name of Lipton. The British obsession with tea came at a heavy cost to the environment as vast areas of forest in the Nigiris and Assam were scoured to make space for tea cultivation, destroying the indigenous wildlife in the process.  The human cost could be seen in the deplorable working conditions and starvation wages paid to the native workforce. Throughout the Victorian era and into the 1930s, virtually all the tea production  was exported to Britain. Only when the price of tea slumped on international markets did it occur to British producers that there was an Indian market ready and waiting on the doorstep.  Which explains how tea drinking became an Indian obsession every bit as compulsive as that of the British. (Inglorious Empire: Shashi Tharoor)

 

Postcard of the Day No. 10

There’s a distinct flavour of Maxfield Parrish about the mountain range on this advertising postcard but I have been unable to track it down so it can’t be confirmed. The young diaphanously clad women posing seductively on the bench could be Parrish creations but the weedy gent in suit and spats is unconvincing and looks like the work of another hand. The splashes of light on the classical columns, the swags of foliage that follow the contours of the peaks and the illuminating rays of the setting sun on the mountain slopes are all characteristic Parrish touches so perhaps this was sold off the peg for the advertiser to customise. These matters aside, if this is what it takes to exercise such fascination in young and attractive females, the case for “White Rose” tailoring could hardly be more convincing. The outcome of the narrative could depend on whether the figure on the left is preparing to stand up or to recline. Any lingering sexual tension is dispersed by the vacuity of expression on the part of the Bertie Wooster figure. A decorous air of deferred gratification is presented for our approval.