Unpaginated trade catalog from the Rasch wallpaper manufacturer with 24 pp. of photographs and text and 13 pp. of wallpaper samples. Oblong octavo (7 3/4 x 10 3/4 inches). Original illustrated wrappers. Some soiling and light warping to front cover, light spotting along cloth spine, slight yellowing to interior, overall very good. Bramsche/Osnabrück, Germany: Rasch, n.d. (circa 1960).

Gebr. Rasch was founded in 1861 by Johann Heinrich Lücke and Hermann Wilhelm Gottfried Rasch in a small factory in Bramsche, Germany. They started with just a 4-color rotary printing press and quickly developed into one of the leading manufacturers of "high-quality and artistically printed wallpaper". According to the Rasch website, "Wallpapers are small works of art that can set the stage for any room in a unique way and fascinate the viewer. Design transcends boundaries." By the 1910s, Rasch had expanded to open factories and offices in Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, London, Melbourne, and Sydney, and in the 1920s printed its first artist collections, including papers designed by the Cologne artist workshop JEKU and Charlotte von Oldenburg.

In the 1930s, Rasch developed "Bauhaus wallpaper" in conjunction with the Bauhaus school in Dessau. These wallpapers no longer featured patterns, but simply a variety of textures in a range of colors. "Through large-scale advertising campaigns and advertising brochures sent directly to architects with original wallpapers, Bauhaus wallpapers also became popular with consumers." Once the Bauhaus school was dissolved, Rasch acquired the rights to the brand name directly from Mies van der Rohe, and continued to successfully produce Bauhaus wallpaper designs for several decades afterwards. Through this collaboration, Rasch played a pioneering role in introducing modernist wallpaper design to the consumer market.

This catalogue and sample book dates to approximately 1960, and contains interspersed pages of texts, textured wallpaper samples from multiple collections, and photographs of the various wallpaper designs in situ. The four pages of 'Bauhaus' wallpaper samples are preceded by a brief introduction which reads in part, "Even after 28 years, Bauhaus wallpapers are still the standard type of modern wallpaper for a calm, uncluttered wall."

Following the Bauhaus collection are photographs from the Rasch Künstler Tapeten wallpapers designed in collaboration with artists such as Letizia Cerio, Jean de Botton, Raymond Peynet, Helga Meyer-Kiel, Margret Hildebrand, Bele Bachem, Hein Heckroth, Cuno Fischer, Shinkichi Tajiri, Renée Sintenis, and Elsbeth Kupferoth. The rest of the catalogue features photographs and wallpaper samples from the Lotura, Interbau, and Kleinmuster collections, with 13 wallpaper samples in total.

A scarce trade catalogue of modernist design; as of March 2026, OCLC locates only a single institutional holding outside of Germany.

Book ID: 53659

Price: $950.00