probably manufactured by Grumbach, Frankfurt, for the Frankfurt Hochbauamt. Total Height: approx. 230 cm, width approx. 215 cm, depth approx. 300 cm. Various types of wood chosen according to functional criteria (such as oak wood against mealworms, beech for the countertop, softwood for the frame), blue lacquer coating, cast metal sink, linoleum. The kitchen comes from the Praunheim estate, the very first of the large-scale drawing-board housing estates and part of New Frankfurt’s so-called “Nidda Valley Project”. Given this background, the estate is frequently referred to in literature as a big “experimental laboratory”.

Overall planning: Ernst May, Herbert Brehm, and Wolfgang Banger, “Department of Standardisation and Planning”, Building Surveyor’s Office (Hochbauamt) of the City of Frankfurt, and others. Responsible for the development of the Frankfurt Kitchen: Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky. The estate was built in three steps between 1926 and 1928/29. The kitchen offered for sale here is therefore one of the earliest of its kind. In this context, the original kitchen sink, which is rare, deserves special mention. Made of stainless steel, its bent segments were connected by soldering. The sink was then lined with plaster and features brass outlets. This is insofar remarkable as at the time sinks were typically made of ceramic or enamelled steel.

The stainless steel sink as it is known today was only mass-produced from the 1950s onwards (at least in Germany; see the Blanco company), so that this detail can be seen as having served as an exemplary model. In the later housing estates of New Frankfurt, such as the Römerstadt estate, more inexpensive ceramic sinks were generally used as kitchen furnishings. The ensemble also comprises a cleaning box, whose cover simultaneously serves as a drainboard for the adjacent sink. The waste drawer element – which seems to have been installed in one of the lower cabinets or in a cabinet of its own – has not survived. However, the present lot includes six surviving aluminium drawers that originally formed part of the kitchen. These drawers are of the first type (the earliest model), with inscriptions such as “flour”, etc. embossed in the aluminium sheet. The second (later) version had riveted labels to mark the aluminium drawers. This kitchen is one example of the numerous variants of the Frankfurt kitchen and demonstrates that apart from spatial conditions and current developments it also had to adapt to budget requirements. (MHA)

Cf. Lit.:
Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, Warum ich Architektin wurde, pp. 145–163; Frauen im Design, pp. 160–173; Die Frankfurter Küche von Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky aus der Sammlung des MAK Wien, exhibition catalogue, Berlin 1992