PEILL + PUTZLER GLASSWORKS, DUEREN

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The glassworks Peill and Son in Dueren, destroyed in the Second World War, and the glassworks of the Putzer Brothers from Penzig, expropriated by the Polish government, merged in 1946 and rebuilt the glassworks in Dueren. Since 1952 the glassworks was under the direction of Günther Peill and Hans Ahrenkiel under the name of Peill + Putzler. The first glass was melted in 1948. In 1994 this important glassworks was forced to close its doors. Important designers like Wilhelm Wagenfeld, Wilhelm Braun-Feldweg and Aloys F. Gangkofner worked for the Peill + Putzler Glassworks and made it familiar especially in architectural circles. Collaboration with Gangkofner took place between 1953 and 1958. A vast number of models for lighting arose out of this collaboration as well as goblets sets. The timeless Iris glass was produced and sold into the 1980s.

Aloys F. Gangkofner developed new techniques for inflating glass lighting fixtures, which he had tested out during free-blowing in Waldsassen. The transfer of these techniques into industrial production liberated the forms from the functional rigidity of the early 1950s and endowed them with an independence and individuality. The lighting fixtures not only served their purpose, but – even when not lit – were also emphatic formal objects for modern rooms. In this sense the model “Venezia” enjoyed particular success.

HESSE GLASSWORKS, STIERSTADT

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The Hesse Glassworks were founded in 1946 in a former bronze and aluminum powder factory in Stierstadt by expellees from the region of Jablonec nad Nisou in northern Bohemia. Its director Fischer, former director of three glassworks in Bohemian Josefsthal-Maxdorf, took over the firm and began production in 1947 with around thirty persons, mostly glassmakers from the firm of Karl Riedel in Josefsthal-Maxdorf. They were later joined by glassmakers of the firm Josef Riedel in Polubny and goblet makers from Silesia. In the mid 1950s the company had 300 employees. In 1989 it ceased production. The glassworks were leveled and the land was given over to residential development.

They produced primarily “Stangenglas” for the jewelry industry in Neugablonz as well as glasses produced partially by machine and glass crystal articles. The quality of these glasses as well as the range of the colors melted from the rare earth quickly made the Hesse Glassworks well known. In 1953 the company formed an association with Aloys F. Gangkofner who had just recently attracted the attention of glass experts in particular with his free-blown glass objects. He brought with him the old artisanal techniques he had revived and already tried and tested in the Lamberts Glassworks in Waldsassen and attempted to modify them for industrial production. In his words: “Here at the Hesse Glassworks I faced the challenge of uniting the artistic creation of form with the possibilities of serial production.”

The desire of a bit of luxury which arose in the wake of the Second World War gave rise to the bizarre toilette articles for the dressing tables as well as vases and bowls, some with asymmetrical forms. In a certain sense these amounted to a concession to the forms the company produced as well as the customers who purchased them and shows the typical stylistic direction of the early '50s.

ERCO LIGHTING, LUEDENSCHEID

- - -In 1934 the ERCO Lighting Firm was founded in Luedenscheid by Arnold Reininghaus and two partners, who later left. The company initially had six employees, sixty years later it grew to a thousand. Already in the 1930s rise and fall fittings and screw base fittings, for example, had been produced from plastics such as Bakelite and Cellidor. During the war, production was inevitably converted to war materials and was ended in 1945 by bombing.

Shortly after the war, Arnold Reininghaus rebuilt the enterprise and resumed production, now mainly of suspension kitchen lamps. In 1948 the products were presented at the fair trade in Hannover. Despite a demand for economically priced lighting, the first collection of plastic lighting was unexciting and architects took little notice of it since plastic was considered a replacement material and not regarded very highly. The company was given a new profile through its collaboration with Aloys F. Gangkofner in 1959. The program of florescent and tube lighting was converted into clear, modern forms. New designs for lighting in living and working spaces were developed. Almost all of these products were distinguished with the rating “good industrial form” at the Hannover trade fair.

- - -“Light is changeable, it can be warm, extravagant like a glowing autumn day, or cold, sober, and functional. It can be cheerful or sad, offer us a friendly brightness on long winter evenings, surround us with the magic of its endearing manifestation. In 1960, as we sought new ways of designing light, we thought first not of form, construction, or function, nor of fashion, style or modernity. We thought of light, of weightness, playful light, of festive brightness, of the functional and sober light of the workplace. We tried to find a fitting clothing for each of its many forms and qualities. Much effort, countless attempts with new materials, the collaboration of internationally known designers – at their head Mr. Aloys F. Gangkofner – and the never flagging interest of our technical experts transformed the risk of a new idea into a great number of interesting solutions.”

Text from the ERCO Katalog 1963