[KPM Ceramics]

When the editors of the Berlin-based graphic design journal Gebrauchsgraphik published a suite of still lifes by emerging photographer Grit Kallin-Fischer, they praised her artful approach to objectivity, suggesting that, "for her, the camera is only a substitute for brush and pencil." But at that time in 1930, a ball of clay might have been more apt. We see such a ball in her study of ceramics, made for the Königliche Porzellan-Manufaktur (KPM) in the same year. The photograph departs from promotional conventions at the German national manufactory, which had long cultivated an aura of elegance in its ads—all white tablecloths and chic place settings—befitting of an outfit that once served kings. Kallin-Fischer upturns the royal table and heads back to the factory, arranging precious porcelain ashtrays alongside implements of their production. Rows of finished bowls appear to be fresh off the rack at left, lined up alongside the unglazed lids next in line for the kiln. Her photograph evokes the multistep firing process, underscoring the extreme regularity of its execution, and the precision of its final product. Kallin-Fischer suggests that, imperial or not, KPM customers could expect nothing short of perfection from their wares.

After training as a painter, Kallin-Fischer enrolled at the Bauhaus in 1926. The photographs she began making there synthesized the influences of a bold-faced faculty; in courses taught by László Moholy-Nagy, Josef Albers, Paul Klee, and others, she developed a keen eye for composition, evident in early, off-kilter portraits of her classmates, and in increasingly refined still lifes. When she returned to Berlin to build a commercial career, her Bauhaus credentials wooed corporate clients. They evidently carried weight at KPM, where a new director was rebranding with modernist-inspired merchandise. One of his new hires was Trude Petri, who designed the ashtrays in this photograph (and whose work is also collected by The Met). In this and other creations for the company, Petri embraced the utilitarian, industrial aesthetic synonymous with the workshops of Kallin-Fischer’s alma mater. Engaging in cross-disciplinary collaboration with Petri, the photographer distills smooth planes of porcelain into an elegant study in shadow and mass, thus securing her own place off the table.