A Look Back at Tajiri’s Wallpaper Designs
- 29 jun
- 2 minuten om te lezen
In 2014, we were contacted by the Victoria and Albert Museum because they were preparing a special-edition box filled with 100 postcards featuring patterns from textiles, wallpaper, fashion, and furnishings in their collection. To our surprise, one of the postcards featured Louisiana, a wallpaper design by Shinkichi Tajiri, created and printed in 1954 at Rasch Tapetenfabrik.
V&A Pattern: 100 postcards in a box with Lousiana postcard.
We knew that Tajiri had designed wallpapers for Rasch Tapetenfabrik, but until then we had never seen his designs in color. We soon learned that Dr. Emile Rasch had donated two original pieces of wallpaper designs to the V&A Museum for their collection.
In the 1950s, Rasch launched a new wallpaper range, the Rasch-KÜNSTLER-Tapeten, marking the beginning of a highly successful chapter for the company. The first designers included architects Fritz August Breuhaus, Hans Schwippert, and Josef Hoffmann, as well as designers Maria May, Tea Ernst, and Margret Hildebrand. In total, more than fifty artists, architects, and designers collaborated with Rasch as freelancers during the 1950s and Tajiri was one of them.
left: Shinkichi Tajiri’s sculpture Sun (forged iron, 1950s) in front of his wallpaper design Künstlertapete Kleine Stadt (1952) at the exhibition
Creative Art - Industrial Design (Osnabrück, 1956). Photo: Egon E. Schleinitz, from the Rasch Archive, Bramsche.
right: Shinkichi Tajiri’s sculpture Untitled (forged iron), shown together with the wallpaper Interbau (1958).Photo: Rasch Archive, Bramsche.
These designs ranged from cheerful, figurative wallpapers to bold graphic patterns that reflected the spirit of postwar modernism. The highlight came in 1956 with the release of the KÜNSTLER wallpapers, showcased in the exhibition “Artistic Creation – Industrial Design: Artists around the Rasch Wallpaper Factory” at the Municipal Museum in Osnabrück. Twenty-eight artists from ten countries took part, including Bele Bachem, Arnold Bode, Letzia Cerio, Lucienne Day, Tea Ernst, Cuno Fischer, Margret Hildebrand, Alfred Mahlau, Bruno Munari, Renée Sintenis, Shinkichi Tajiri, Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart, and the artist collective junger westen, featuring Gustav Deppe, Thomas Grochowiak, Ernst Hermanns, Emil Schumacher, and Hans Werdehaus.
Curious to learn more about this chapter of Tajiri's career, my mother eventually reached out to Rasch Tapetenfabrik. The company, still run by the Rasch family, responded warmly and invited my mother and aunt for a visit, a gesture that meant a great deal to us.
