In Leipzig the Christmas biscuits and gingerbreads have reappeared on the supermarket shelves, a sure sign of not only the increasingly aggressive commercialisation of Yuletide celebrations that one can't help thinking surely used to have another, long since forgotten, function, an origin beyond profit and gluttony; but also the surest of signs that summer is on its way out.
As is the news that the Grassimesse Jury have decreed who have been invited to present their works at the 2025 Grassimesse Leipzig.......
Inaugurated in 1920, as a response to the confusions of the rise of machine production, with the aim of being a guarantor of quality, meaningfulness and value in context of objects of daily use, the contemporary Grassimesse Leipzig remains to this day one of Europe's more important fairs for, more important platforms for, contemporary applied art, craft and design.
One of the more important guarantors of quality, meaningfulness and value in contemporary applied art, craft and design.
And that not least because while all are invited to apply, participation is strictly by invitation from the annually reconstituted and reconvened Grassimesse Jury; a famously fastidious institution who in 1920, in addition to Richard Graul, the, then, Director of the, then, Kunstgewerbemuseum Leipzig, counted the likes of, for example, Peter Behrens, Walter Gropius or Josef Hoffmann amongst its number.1 And whose 2025 incarnation features, alongside senior members of the Grassi Museum für Angewandte Kunst leadership, the likes of, for example, Katharina Thaler, owner of Leipzig based gallery Thaler Originalgrafik; Dr. Petra Hölscher, Conservator at Die Neue Sammlung - The Design Museum Munich; or Thomas Gerber, Managing Director of Wilde+Spieth.
A 2025 Jury who have reduced the ca. 300 international applicants to 73 individuals/collectives from 9 nations: a mix of familiar faces and first timers from across a wide range of genres, and representing a variety of positions and approaches, who will present their work throughout Leipzig's Grassi Museum für Angewandte Kunst, at times inter-mixed with, in dialogue with, the museum's permanent collection exhibition, over the weekend October 24th to 26th.
73 individuals/collectives who will also be competing for the 7 Grassi Prizes on offer in 2025, including the new Gemma Grassipreis - Visions for Jewels, a non-cash prize worth €4,000 sponsored by Berlin based gemstone dealer Ole Bergmann, to be awarded, as the title implies, to a project which makes particularly innovative use of gemstones, and also the €2,500, cash, smow-Designpreis, an honour awarded in 2024 to Nadja Schulze and co-jointly awarded in 2023 to Cornelius Réer and Annabella Hevesi/Line and Round.
In addition, and has been a component of the event since its first edition in 1920, the 2025 Grassimesse will also feature presentations by students from across a wide range of applied art, craft and design genres at international art and design schools, specifically: Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Bauhaus Universität Weimar, Hochschule Wismar, Fakultät Angewandte Kunst Schneeberg, Staatliche Fachschule für Keramik Höhr-Grenzhausen, Hochschule Hof, and the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig, that latter an oft, and that unfairly so, overlooked protagonist in the developments in creativity in the first third of the 20th century. As is the, then, Kunstgewerbemuseum Leipzig, the, today, Grassi Museum für Angewandte Kunst Leipzig.
Thus a 2025 Grassimesse that not only offers the opportunity to purchase contemporary applied art, craft and design of quality, meaningfulness and value, to support actual artisans rather than international conglomerates and industrial confectioners, to make healthy life choices, but also extends and invitation of its own to both reflect on developments in applied art, craft and design over the past couple of centuries and to engage in conversations on the contemporary realities of, future challenges of and future directions of applied art, craft and design with some of those creatives most directly involved with such questions. And who will be co-responsible for advancing the necessary discourses in decades to come.
The full list of 2025 Grassimesse Leipzig exhibitors can be found at www.grassimesse.de/exhibitors
And further details on Grassimesse 2025, including opening times and ticket prices, and how to apply for the 2026 edition, can be found at www.grassimesse.de
1for the full listing of the 1920 jury see, Die Werkstatt der Kunst, Vol, XIX, Nr. 12, 22nd December 1919, page 79
