Albin Müller received academic training in art and design, but he was self-taught as an architect. He began his career as an apprentice to his father, who was a cabinetmaker, and afterward worked for several years in the furniture industry. From 1900 to 1906, he was also an instructor at the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Applied Arts) in Magdeburg, where he taught various courses, including Theories of Architectural and Ornamental Form. In 1903 Müller began dedicating more time toward the advancement of his industrial-design career. He entered contracts for production with several German companies, including the Lüdenscheid-based metal-goods manufacturer Eduard Hueck, and his design output increased exponentially.¹ Müller’s commitment to industrial design prefigures his involvement in the Deutscher Werkbund, which promoted collaboration between artists and industry to improve the standing of German manufacturers in the international market. Müller worked with Hueck from about 1903 to 1905, during which time he created at least twenty-eight designs for the company that were put into production.² Many of Müller’s metalwork designs for Hueck were available in tin, copper, or brass. In modernist style, Müller’s designs present these materials in an honest fashion, aiming to enhance the beauty of the metals from which they were made. Müller also designed textiles, pottery, porcelain and glass, furniture, and interiors. He gained international attention for his award-winning metalwork designs presented at the St. Louis World’s Fair (1904) and the German Decorative Arts Exhibition in Dresden (1906). Müller was also a prominent figure of the Jugendstil art movement, and he became the leader the Darmstadt artist’s colony in 1908 following the death of Joseph Maria Olbrich, a position he held until the group’s final exhibition in 1914.

 

Müller’s design for Teemaschine combines two metals, copper and brass, both of which are ornamented with detailed surface designs. Intended for mass production, this ornamentation was achieved by pressing the metal into molded forms.³ The base of the teakettle is ringed with stylized designs inspired by the architectural tracery of Gothic cathedrals, while the flowing linear ornament on the supporting arm of the réchaud (the warming element below the kettle) draws on motifs popular with the Jugendstil art movement. The Teemaschine in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, likely dates to 1903, as an identical example was displayed alongside other works by Müller at the Dankworth & Richters wine restaurant in Magdeburg, Germany in 1904. Notably, Müller’s work from this period demonstrates similarities to that of Joseph Maria Olbrich and Peter Behrens, who were also designing for Hueck in the early 1900s.⁴ —Sarah Marie Horne