This ashtray is one of the earliest works by Marianne Brandt to be produced in the Bauhaus Metal Workshop in Weimar.

Brandt joined the Bauhaus in 1924 at a critical stage in its development. The Hungarian, Laslo Moholy-Nagy had recently been made Formeister (form master) of the Metal Workshops by the Director of the school, Walter Gropius. He replaced Johannes Itten who had been in charge of the Metal Workshops since the establishment of the Bauhaus in 1919.

Itten had been an influential figure in the Bauhaus. He was Director of the preliminary course and several other workshops beside the important metal workshops. His approach was essentially subjective, placing great emphasis on the student's individual creativity. Under Itten's direction, the Metal Workshops worked exclusively in precious metals producing highly crafted objects of an individual nature which at times bore similarities with the work produced by the Wiener Werkstatte.

However Itten's individualistic expressionism was increasingly at odds with the ambitions of Gropius who was determined to reorganise the metal shops for industrial prototype production. Itten departed in 1923 and was replaced by Moholy-Nagy who was much more in sympathy with this policy. Having been associated with Van Doesburg of the De Stijl movement and the Russian Supremacists. El Lissitzky and Naum Gabo, he incorporated elements of the constructivist philosophy in the new curriculum. In his writing he advocated the use of simple geometric forms and placed great emphasis on clarity, objectivity and abstraction which, he was convinced, was the most promising approach to the problems of industrial design itself. In this he was supported by Christian Dell who had been made Craft Master of the Metal Workshops in 1922. Dell, who had worked with Van de Velde, was an experienced silversmith. His own work illustrates a concern for pure geometric forms (see the tea and coffee service, VAM Circ.257-262,-1970) and he proved a gifted teacher who could demonstrate how different shapes could be created out of flat sheets of metal. Moholy-Nagy successfully encouraged this talent and was instrumental in introducing the use of ferrous metals, nickel and chromium plating.

One of the first and arguably most brilliant students to respond to these developments was Marianne Brandt. She was later to write: "We wanted to return to the simplest forms." (Form und Zweck, Fachzeitschrift fur Industrielle Formestaltung, Issue No.3, 1979, p.69). Her first designs which include this ashtray and the tea infuser in the British Museum were ruthlessly geometric and have since become icons of the Weimar Bauhaus.

Thus this ashtray represents a fundamental change of direction, not only for the Metal Workshops but for the Bauhaus generally. From this point onwards, the tuition and workshop practice were geared to the requirements of industrial design. After the move to Dessau in 1925, Marianne Brandt designed a series of light fittings adopted by Korting & Matthiesen and Leipzig Leutzsch which were commercially very successful. However, her work never quite achieved the formal and iconic properties of her earlier work in Weimar.