Set tables Josef Albers

The effect of colors, shapes, lines and surfaces on each other and the perception of colors based on squares are the central aspects of the work of painter and art theorist Josef Albers (1888-1976). With these set tables, which Albers designed in 1926 for the Villa Möllenhoff in Berlin, he took his reflections from the two-dimensional canvas into three-dimensional space and thus at the same time from purely contemplative art into practical everyday use.
Not by chance, because set tables, generally appreciated above all for their space-saving advantages - as storage surfaces that can be enlarged or reduced as needed - were virtually predestined for Albers' purposes. He combined filigree frames made of clear-lacquered oak with matte-black lacquered frames made of red beech wood and glossy glass tops lacquered in color underneath. Lines, surfaces, angles and protrusions, together with the variously structured surfaces, give the tables a light, spatial dynamism despite their formal austerity. The clear colors, never mixed as in Alber's paintings, but applied directly from industrial production, play a major role in this, and always have a different effect on the viewer depending on the place where they are set up, the position of the tables in relation to one another, and the lighting conditions. Apart from an interim replica, in which the table tops were made of acrylic glass, there was until recently no faithful new edition of the set tables. Here it comes now, made in Germany with three millimeter thick glass plates of Italian origin.