With the state of the world as it is, we risk foregoing the importance of simple things like rest and self care. We’re busy with our routines – their efficiency, and our bandwidth. So, this week we want to take a pointed note to pause in the noise of each of these days. This post is dedicated to that intention, and specifically to our favourite kind of pause: the coffee break.
Looking into a brief history of it, we found that the coffee break is intrinsically linked to the dawn of an eight-hour factory workday that took place in the early twentieth century. The establishment of a set workday fueled the formation of unions, who in turn demanded breaks from their strenuous work. Enter: coffee, a perfectly energizing pause, and a product that also began to be commercially available around this time. Our research led us to realize that the world’s love for coffee breaks set in place a high demand for their functional counterparts: the coffee and tea sets. What we’re showing here are a selection of our favourites, tracing the timeline of the coffee break from the late 1800s onwards, and marveling at these marriages of form and function. The incorporation of thoughtful design into each of our daily routines is something we celebrate. These give us all the more reason to do so.
Teapot, Josef Hoffman for Wiener Werkstätte, 1903, Minneapolis Institute of Art
Tea Infuser and Strainer, Marianne Brandt, 1924, The Met
Tea Service, Josef Hoffman, 1910, National Gallery of Australia
Teapot, Wiener Werkstätte, Circa 1900-1920, University of Michigan Museum of Art
Teapot, Josef Hoffman, 1904, Museum of Fine Arts Boston
Coffee Pot, Carl Auböck, 1960, Collection of Michael Maharam
Teapot, Chinese Qing Dynasty, Circa 19th Century, Bukowskis
Tea Set, Josef Hoffman, 1903, MAK Center
Coffee Caddy, Hanz Przyrembel, 1926, Sotheby’s
Coffee Set, Fratelli Caccione, Circa 1970, Sotheby’s
Tea and Coffee Set, Jean E. Puiforcat, Circa 1945-50, Sotheby’s
Coffee Pot, Wiwen Nilsson, 1956, Bukowskis
Coffee and Tea Piazza, Michael Graves for Alessi, 1983, Sotheby’s
Coffeemaker, Florian Seiffert for Braun, 1972
