Alma Buscher

Alma Buscher started at the bauhaus in 1922. And like all female students, was pushed out of the way, into the weaving studio. But after a few lousy assignments, she convinced Walter Gropius to allow her into the woodcarving workshop, where she developed toys and other utilitarian objects. She showed them what's what at a 1923 bauhaus exhibition with her design for a children's nursery in George Muche and Adolf Meyer's Haus am Horn. Her design was important for the bauhaus-ian principles it demonstrated, but also because the room and its furniture was specifically designed for children, at a child's scale and for a child's needs (well, except for the sharp corners and rock-hard floor). Her nursery rejected the notion of children as small adults who needed nothing more than miniature versions of adult furniture in their own rooms.

Her building blocks were among the best selling products mass produced at the bauhaus, and over 80 years later, are still being sold today. Alma Buscher married Werner Siedhoff in 1926, had two children and moved her family to Weimar with the bauhaus. She then designed two paper building kits for Otto-Maier Verlag Ravensburger: Segelschiff (sailboat) and Krahn (crane). She died in 1944 during an air raid.





top: abstract furniture for the Haus am Horn nursery (photo by esperantonia and also seen here on Daddytypes, from back when I would fill Greg's inbox with all sorts of everything before I had my own blog). bottom: spread from unknown (because I can't remember) book showing a 1924 design for a changing table and a 1923 set of building (a boat) blocks; and another view of the nursery at Haus am Horn.