Franz Rickert (1904-1991) was a German gold- and silversmith, who taught for many years at the Akademie der Bildenden Kunst (The Academy of Fine Arts) in Munich, Germany, becoming Professor there in 1938.
Rickert had a substantial impact in German and European gold- and silversmithing through those years of teaching, but is virtually unknown in the English-speaking world; there are very few articles published in English mentioning his work and teaching.
This is unfortunate; his legacy is a clear philosophy of thinking and making that has been both absorbed, and illuminated through the work of his more famous students; Hermann Jünger, Erhard Hössle, and Hendrik Forster, and their students, such as Otto Künzli, Daniel Kruger, and Ulla Mayer. His most famous student, Hermann Jünger (who succeeded Rickert as Professor at the Akademie in 1972), credits his teacher and mentor with confirming that ‘"making" is a far more complex matter than merely the practice and execution of perfect technique.’ Jünger was also grateful to Rickert for allowing him the freedom ‘acquired through responsibility to his own ideas … and the space which permitted him a lot of detours and failed experiments.’
Franz Rickert’s approach to making concerned a holistic kind of involvement and empathy with the material. He stated "...the original unity has been lost, consciousness and causal thinking have taken possession of us." His life’s passion was to try and rectify this; his whole philosophy and work was grounded in giving equal importance to, and promoting the synthesis of both technical skill and artistic sensitivity. The education of the human being in its entirety formed the central motif of his pedagogy, which he expounded upon for over three decades. It was embodied most succinctly for him in the Greek gods of Hephaestos and Athena. Hephaestos was the god of metalsmithing, and protector of the craftsman, and sister to Athena, goddess of the arts, and protector of knowledge and wisdom. (It is interesting to note that arts are grouped with wisdom in a goddess.) The tie of brother and sister refers to the closeness of the areas of "philotechny" (the love of craft and technique) and "philosophy" (the love of thinking and knowledge), that is, the hand and the head. He felt that the craftsperson held a special place in society, as an embodiment of this connection between art and life. He denounced specialisation, and stated ‘The specialist only sees his special field, he forgets to look beyond that and loses inevitably the sense of the interrelation of life'’ and suggested that ‘crafting as a source of healing power cannot be valued highly enough.'’ Rickert was, however, not a theorist, preferring to spread his ideas directly to his students, teaching by example. In his almost 35 years of teaching, Rickert only produced one publication, "The Importance of Craft Industry in Our Time" (1948), and tended to avoid large public functions and discussions. This paper was only written after a specific request for such, when he was invited to Sweden in 1948 for a short residency by the Swedish Organisation for Cultural Exchange.
Rickert received his early influences in his thinking from his father, Heinrich Rickert, a philosopher and university professor whose ideas, in turn, were developed from some of Immanuel Kant’s. Most relevant of these to F. Rickert would be the idea that the mind is actively involved in the objects it experiences; that is, there is no separation between mind and object. Another important source of ideas was Heinrich von Kleist’s (1777-1811) short essay, "On The Marionette Theatre", first published in 1810. This small but immensely perceptive piece aligns the movement of puppets (the kind that are suspended by a single string) with dancers; describes them as possessing truth; that there is no falseness in their movements because their limbs and bodies simply follow the line governed by the centre of gravity. ‘Affectation is seen, ...when the soul, or moving force, appears at some point other than the centre of gravity of the movement.'’ Kleist further suggested that man cannot hope to come anywhere near this natural grace; that ‘only a god can equal inanimate matter in this respect.'’
Most integral to the development of his philosophy of making was Rickert’s friendship with Eugen Herrigel (1884-1955), author of Zen in the Art of Archery. Rickert formed a close and long-lasting friendship with Herrigel, who had been a student of Rickert’s father. Rickert recognised in Herrigel’s book his own train of thoughts, and was so impressed with it, he recommended that all his students should read it. For him, the aim of craft is not the accumulation of technical skills; they are simply a means to an end. As with Herrigel’s archery, the search is for inner balance; for Kleist’s "centre of gravity". And this can only be achieved through the elimination, or switching off of the intellect; ie. it can only be grasped by non-rational means.
It is likely (although unconfirmed) that Rickert made some study of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement, as there are quite strong correspondences between the two approaches. Morris looked back, as did Rickert, to the unity of art and life in the Middle Ages, and emphasised this unity as being demonstrated in the household utensils of the time.
Franz Rickert railed against the separations between art, craft and living, (as the separation of thinking from doing) and condemned specialisation as a demeaning force in industry. He thought the craftsperson should be at once artist and technician, and take responsibility for the entirety and life of the work. He suggested that the essence and spirit of Craft could be found in the simple everyday objects for service, the utilitarian objects of farmers and villagers. Further, these objects maintained their vital beauty after years of use, "able to tell of a long life and experiences like a human face." For this reason, he encouraged his students to visit museums frequently to study these forms more closely.
Rickert was convinced that the right way of breathing was a significant condition for the mastery of silversmithing (as did Herrigel with archery). This, Rickert decided, was another form of meditation. Repetitive activities which "let the will and intellect rest" co-exist with those elements that require conscious analysis and together form the basis of the majority of crafting (e.g. hammering). However, it required years of practice and experience to achieve accuracy, and until those work processes could be done without using the intellect. This, balanced together with the processes that demanded the intellect, formed for him that vital completeness, which he resolutely believed should be the aim of the Craftsperson.
Rickert suggested that from a certain point of time within the work, the work would take shape by itself. "The craftsman entrusts himself to this growth. Not any more he wants to work, but the work will be done through him." This point of view closely parallels Zen. In his book, Zen in Japanese Art (1960), Toshimitsu Hasumi stated, "Outward technique by itself is not art. It is only through long training of the soul that the pupil is brought to the true inward technique. In art it is not merely a question of artistic dexterity, but of the artistic process within the artist...That is ‘Zen in art’."
However Rickert’s approach was not an unconscious one – he did not agree with an unplanned approach to making. For him paper models were an important exercise in exploring and learning about the form. Determining the centre of a curve and the placement of that centre was for him very important – 2mm difference can change the character of a bowl. Conversely, he disapproved of a strict and dead geometry in forms, which were according to him, with their mathematical exactness opposite to the liveliness of natural forms that are never totally regular.
Rickert further believed that the naïve instinctive connectedness was destroyed by the awakening of self-awareness, and that this could only be substituted with a balance based on experience and cognition. Regarding this attitude, Rickert several times accepted students with little or no technical experience, so that they could work unbiased and spontaneously, without baggage. This demonstrates that he valued immediacy and direct expression higher than technical perfection. Students with too much self-confidence were criticised and made to do basic tasks, such as spoon making.
Rickert was a strong advocate of spoon making as a teaching exercise; it was in this way that one learnt to make a long wire, or a flat sheet. Spoons were made, and then compared and assigned characters, for instance, the fat auntie, or the cheeky nephew, to encourage students in their understanding of form. Hermann Jüünger’s spoon collection, and its subsequent exhibition and catalogue were inspired by Rickert’s attention to this item.
Pivotal to Rickert’s pedagogy was teaching students how to see. He was also a great gardener, and likened the relationship between plants and soil, to that between students and teaching. Nature was for him a consummate instructor, and he continued to spend much of his retirement in the garden. He used it as a teaching device – students were sent to the garden to look at seed pods and leaves; to look at the connections between branch, leaf, and stem. He showed through these examples that the points at which a branch joined a trunk or a flower joined a stem, generally demonstrated some indicative form, and was not like one cylinder directly abutting another. This understanding was useful to the maker when joining, for instance, a spout to a pot, or a spoon to its handle, and achieving a pleasing form. Nature was also useful in providing indications of proportion, and appropriate combinations of proportion and form. In this way, principles of making were developed directly from nature; harmony of form and truth to material.
Rickert considered Nature as a model, rather than a thing to be copied. Likewise, Hermann Jünger, in the early 1970’s realised that jewellery as picture making could not offer him the expressive possibilities he had found in his earlier abstract works. He found jewellery with narrative content too explicit in that it was too difficult to be then both of its maker and its wearer. "In highly dramatic pieces especially, the artist’s assertiveness, like a designer label, can squelch the wearer’s identity."
Another particularity of Rickert’s teaching was the individual attention given to each student, and the critical analysis of each creative design. It was natural that Rickert dismissed the separation of design and fine art. Again it appears through Herrigel’s influence, that the Japanese teacher-student relationship had been taken on by Rickert - "putting last of one’s own interest in favour of an object, and the high degree of responsibility toward the student". He expected students "total acceptance of his authority as well as the willingness to totally accept his style of teaching, to entirely entrust themselves to his leadership without contradiction, and to work with seriousness and commitment." This was confirmed by Hendrik Forster, who related his own perception of the time when he was an impetuous 24yr old student. He said Rickert directed him in an indirect way, making him do six months of paper models. "His demeanour demanded respect – you knew he spoke out of a deep sense of balance and meaning. … Therefore he was a teacher in the Zen sense; he had no need to exert his authority."
Rickert retired from teaching at the Akademie in 1972, when Hendrik Forster was a student there. As a retirement gift, Rickert was presented with one spoon each from his 19 students.
Thanks to Robert Baines, Hendrik Forster, and Mascha Moje for their assistance in the preparation of this information.
