Lilly Reich - Lilly and Ludwig

Lilly and Ludwig

Through her involvement with the Werkbund Reich, Lilly also met Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe. In 1926 she moved from Frankfurt to Berlin to work with Mies. She was Van Der Rohe's personal and professional partner for 13 years from 1925 until his emigration to the US in 1938. It is said that they were constant companions, working together on curating and implementing exhibitions for the Werkbund, as well as designing modern furniture as part of larger architectural commissions such as the Barcelona Pavilion in 1929 and the Tugendhat House in Brno.

Two of their best known modern furniture designs from this period are the Barcelona chair and Brno Chair.

Albert Pheiffer, Vice President of Design and Management at Knoll, has been researching and lecturing on Reich for some time. He points out that:

"It became more than a coincidence that Mies's involvement and success in exhibition design began at the same time as his personal relationship with Reich."

"It is interesting to note that Mies did not fully develop any contemporary furniture successfully before or after his collaboration with Reich".

When Mies Van der Rohe became the director of the Bauhaus School of design and architecture in 1930, Lilly Reich joined him there as one of the only female teachers. Reich taught interior design and furniture design until the late 1930s.

The German born interior and product designer Lilly Reich was given some credit for her modernist designs 64 years after her death. The MoMa in NYC presented a series of discussion groups in 2010 on females artists of the Bauhaus period. Otherwise, she would still be barely mentioned as a footnote. Lilly Reich began her career in textile design which was the acceptable professional path for females designers during the early part of the twentieth century. She played an integral part during the Bauhaus movement in Dessau and Berlin in Germany and served on professional boards such as the Deutscher Werkbund (German Work Federation). Lilly Reich managed her own interior design firm and was a faculty member at the Berlin University of Arts.

Lilly Reich collaborated and co-designed the Brno Chair, the famous Barcelona Chair, and the Barcelona Pavilion along with Mies van der Rohe on behalf of the German government for the 1929 World Exhibition in Barcelona, Spain. The Barcelona Pavilion is considered to be a masterpiece of modern design, however, Lilly Reich is rarely mentioned in textbooks nor given proper credit for her contributions. She also worked with Joseph Hoffman which designed the Kubus armchair and sofa. Lilly Reich traveled to the United States, England, and Austria to study and work with the designers of her time. She also curated exhibitions on behalf of her government.