Elsa Tennhardt and E. & J. Bass Company
Vanity Set
1927
Scroll
Physical Qualities
Silver plate, glass, Tray: 14 3/16 × 7 in. (36 × 17.8 cm.)
Brush: 9 × 4 9/16 in. (22.9 × 11.6 cm.)
Atomizer: 7 × 3 1/8 × 2 7/8 in. (17.8 × 7.9 × 7.3 cm.)
Mirror: 10 13/16 × 7 in. (27.5 × 17.8 cm.)
Powder box: 5 5/16 × 4 5/8 in. (13.5 × 11.7 cm.)
Comb: 8 × 1 7/16 in. (20.3 × 3.7 cm.)
Credit Line
Gift of Gretchen and Roger Redden, Baltimore
Object Number
2022.28-30; 2023.98-100
This 1920s silver vanity set features all the tools needed to groom for an evening of electric lights and city views: mirror, powder, brush, perfume. Capturing the energy of modern metropolitan living, designer Elsa Tennhardt decorated the set with radiating thunderbolt lines and triangular edges. As a young woman, Tennhardt immigrated to the United States from Germany and took art classes in Manhattan before joining the manufacturer of residential goods, E. & J. Bass. Like many female designers in the early 20th century, her artistic role in the company was not identified until decades later, when scholars noticed her name, not the company owners’, in patent registrations.
(V. Anderson and B. Luberda, Gallery Installation, Scott 2, July 2022.)
Baltimore Museum of Art by gift, 2022; Roger Duffy (1932-2008) and Gretchen Matilda Sause Redden (b. 1936), Baltimore, MD
Stern, Jewel, Tucker, Kevin W. and Venable, Charles L. "Modernism in American Silver: 20th-Century Design," Yale University Press, 2005, p. 72, fig. 3.20.
Inscribed: See text entry
On View at the BMA
