‘Bauhaus’ telephone
The design of this telephone has been attributed to Marcel Breuer (1902 – 81) who was engaged to design the new factory buildings for Fuld & Co in 1927-8. It was selected for the New Frankfurt housing program; a modern low cost development intended to relieve the post-World War I housing shortage. Every apartment was fitted with one of these phones, the parts of which were standardised and mostly made in small workshops. The Deutscher Werkbund and the Bauhaus were involved in the project, and so it is often called the Bauhaus phone.
The telephone design fulfils the modernist- functionalist criteria demanded by the project. Its form is an arresting departure from contemporary telephone design. It uses a mixture of materials, with the body in black lacquered sheet brass and a substantial bakelite handset extending significantly wider than the body. The rotary dial presents a strong design element, residing neatly in the middle of the square-faced base.
