Coffee Service

1929–30

Albert Feinauer
American, born Germany, 1886–1955
Barbour Silver Company, Division of the International Silver Company
American, 1892–1931
Meriden, Connecticut

This dynamic coffee service exemplifies German émigré Albert Feinauer’s unique blend of modernist forms in his designs for the American market. The cylindrical and spherical shapes of the three vessels are indebted to German Bauhaus principles of clean lines and geometric simplicity, while the stepped pattern of right-angle lines, circles, and arcs suggest the fragmented and discontinuous lines of Cubism. Feinauer’s designs for the International Silver Company unfortunately coincided with the devastating stock market crash of 1929, which halted the company’s production of these modern wares.

Status: On View, Gallery 271
Department: Arts of the Americas

Artist: Albert Feinauer
Title: Coffee Service
Place: Meriden (Object made in:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: c. 1929–1930
Medium: Silver plate and cane
Inscriptions: Marked on bottom of each piece: By / Barbour / 5521
Dimensions: Coffeepot: 23.9 × 8.9 × 8.9 cm (9 3/8 × 3 1/2 × 3 1/2 in.); Creamer: 10.6 × 6.4 × 8.9 cm (4 3/16 × 2 1/2 × 3 1/2 in.); Sugar bowl: 6.4 × 14.6 × 9.8 cm (2 1/2 × 5 3/4 × 3 7/8 in.)
Credit Line: Mary Swissler Oldberg Fund
Reference Number: 2014.996.1-3

Annual report (Art Institute of Chicago, 2014–15) online only.
Judith A. Barter, Elizabeth McGoey, et al., American Silver in the Art Institute of Chicago (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), cat. 88 (ill.).
Elizabeth McGoey, ed., American Silver in the Art Institute of Chicago (Art Institute of Chicago, 2018), https://publications.artic.edu/americansilver/reader/collection/section/6, cat. 88 (ill.).

With James P. Infante, New York, by 2004; sold to W. Scott Braznell, Hamden, CT, 2014; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 2014.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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