Naum slutzky biography
- Naum Slutzky was a goldsmith, industrial designer and master craftsman of the Bauhaus.
- Naum Slutzky was a goldsmith, industrial designer and master craftsman of the Bauhaus.
- Slutzky became the master goldsmith at the Bauhaus in Berlin between 1919-1923.
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Naum Slutzky
Ukrainian industrial designer
Naum Slutzky (28 February 1894 in Kiev, Russian Empire (now Kyiv, Ukraine) – 4 November 1965 in Stevenage, England) was a goldsmith, industrial designer and master craftsman of the Bauhaus. In the art history literature his first name is sometimes spelled as Nahum or Nawn.
Bauhaus
Slutzky studied to become a goldsmith at Wiener Werkstätte (for Josef Hoffmann and Edward Wimmer among others) in Vienna. From 1919 he taught at the Bauhaus in Weimar, working with Johannes Itten. He mainly designed jewellery and lamps, but also teapots and coffee pots (there is a silver teapot in the collections of Victoria and Albert Museum London, and a coffee pot in Nationalmuseum/National Museum of Fine Arts, Stockholm). In 1924 he left Bauhaus to become an independent designer.
England
In 1933, when the Bauhaus school was closed by the Nazis, Slutzky fled to England where he initially found work at the progressive art college, Dartington Hall in Totness, Devon. He went on to be a design teacher at Central School of Arts
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Naum Slutzky, a visionary Bauhaus designer, left an indelible mark on the world of industrial design. Born in Russia, Slutzky's work embodied the spirit of the age, embracing the possibilities of machine technology and challenging the conventions of traditional craftsmanship. His creations stood as a testament to the Bauhaus philosophy, where process and function took precedence over the intrinsic value of materials. In a time of economic turmoil and rising inflation in Germany, Slutzky rejected precious metals and embraced base metals, reflecting the changing times.
Slutzky's journey into design began with a dual passion for engineering and fine art, evident in his distinctive creations. He initially honed his skills as a goldsmith at the renowned Wiener Werkstätte between 1912 and 1913. Subsequently, he pursued engineering studies from 1914 to 1919 at the Technical High School, complemented by formal artistic training at the Viennese Art School.
In December 1919, Slutzky received a transformative opportunity when Walter Gropius invited him to join the metal and goldsmithing wo
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Naum Slutzky was a highly talented designer across many fields, and the stark, severe jewellery he made during the 1920s and 1930s is interesting for its exploration of how Bauhaus principles could successfully be applied to jewellery.
Slutzky was born in Kyiv (Kiev) in 1894, the son of a goldsmith. In 1905, the year of the Kiev pogrom, the family emigrated to Vienna. There he undertook an apprenticeship in goldsmithing and in 1912 joined the goldsmiths’ department at the Wiener Werkstätte. He studied at Johannes Itten’s private art school, and in 1919 followed Itten to Weimar to the newly-established Bauhaus, where he became the first craft master of the metal workshop, staying until 1923.
His years as a free-lance designer in Hamburg, 1927-33, were his most productive as a jeweller, encouraged by the support of the Hamburg Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, which acquired his work and gave him an exhibition in 1929. His jewellery from this period was varied: some in gold with cabochon stones; other pieces in base metal, primarily chromium-plated brass with lit
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