“Low bowls with flowers, as well as flowers placed on the tablecloth and a platter of fruit, are the most beautiful table decorations. All table centrepieces with rocks, palm trees, ostriches, deer, and such are ludicrous, for these things have no business on a table, and all tall table decorations – even those made of flowers – are also unsuitable since they screen the dinner guests from one another”, opined Ellen Key of table culture in her 1899 essay Beauty in the Home.1

But that was then.

With the exhibition table talks — Tischgespräche the Kunstgewerbemuseum Dresden present positions by students from Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin and the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts Copenhagen on contemporary table culture.

Jelly Effect by Elena Eulitz & Hybrid by Dan Saroussi, as seen at table talks - Tischgespräche, Kunstgewerbemuseum, Schloss Pillnitz, Dresden

Without wanting to in any way detract from the work undertaken by Kunsthochschule Berlin Weissensee students in the past year, a highlight of our visit to the 2017 Rundgang summer exhibition was the thunderstorm which broke while we there. Calling it biblical would be to trivialise the ferocity with which it smit the day asunder, turning in its fury the Bühringstraße in front of the school into a Bühring Straits. And the first of three storms which broke over Berlin in quick succession, almost sinking the German capital.

Magnificent, imposing and a joy to behold. But would the 2017 Rundgang also make such a positive and lasting impression……..?

Kunsthochschule Berlin Weissensee

Merging Loops by Bára Finnsdóttir, as seen at the Kunsthochschule Berlin Weissensee Rundgang 2016

As East Berlin’s Art and Design College the Kunsthochschule Berlin Weissensee was in many ways symbolic of East Germany’s difficult

S.Rack by Heinrich Kerth Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin Rundgang 2014

Some 24 hours after finding ourselves in the same corridor as Axel Kufus at the Universität der Künste 2014 Rundgang

Returning to Berlin from Einblick at the Fachhochschule Potsdam the next stage on our 2011 summer tour was Rundgang 2011

The last stage of the (smow)summer tour 2010 took us across Berlin to the Kunsthochschule Weißensee. Established in 1946 the