Werner Burri Artwork valuations, appraisals and auction estimates

Werner Burri (Thunstetten, 18 October 1898; † Bern, 13 May 1972) was a Swiss ceramist who, as head of the pattern and mold workshop at the Velten-Vordamm stoneware factory in Velten, designed mass-produced ceramic molds and create individual pieces. Born in 1898, Burri quickly abandoned his engineering studies at the Zurich Polytechnic to devote himself to painting. Read the full biography

Werner Burri (Thunstetten, 18 October 1898; † Bern, 13 May 1972) was a Swiss ceramist who, as head of the pattern and mold workshop at the Velten-Vordamm stoneware factory in Velten, designed mass-produced ceramic molds and create individual pieces. Born in 1898, Burri quickly abandoned his engineering studies at the Zurich Polytechnic to devote himself to painting. From 1921 he was enrolled as a student at the Bauhaus in Weimar and completed the preliminary course with Johannes Itten. He then moved on to the Bauhaus ceramics workshop, which was the only one of the Bauhaus workshops not in Weimar but in Dornburg an der Saale and was headed by Gerhard Marcks. Here, at the end of 1924, Burri took the potter's craftsman exam. From 1925, after the Bauhaus moved to Dessau in 1925, where a ceramics workshop was not set up, Burri initially worked in the Dornburg workshop, which was continued by Otto Lindig. In January 1928, taking over from Theodor Bogler, he went to Steingutfabriken Velten-Vordamm in Velten as head of the pattern and mold workshop, where he was responsible for many of the series molds and individual parts known to the company. In Velten in 1928 he met the ceramist Hedwig Bollhagen. [2] After the factory went bankrupt in 1931, he returned to Switzerland and worked in Marcel Noverraz's workshop in Carouge. From 1934 he worked again in Germany as a freelance artist at the HB ceramic workshop with Hedwig Bollhagen in Marwitz , where he again met Thoma Gräfin Grote and Charles Crodel . She modeled for Crodel and designed her collection, the forms of which survive to this day. With the outbreak of the Second World War , he had to leave Nazi Germany as a neutral confederate and finally returned to Switzerland in 1939. Here he worked as a freelance ceramist and held a teaching position at the Bern Ceramics School. In 1959 he was a founding member of the Working Group of Swiss Ceramists. Werner Burri died on 13 May 1972 in Bern. On the occasion of the 100th birthday of the Bauhaus, an exhibition featuring Walter Burri's projects will be held at the Hetjens Museum in Düsseldorf in 2019.