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Gunta Stölzl’s Bauhaus dorm blanket is coming back with modern updates

100 years old, and still just as cool

By Liz Stinson
A bed with a red bed frame. On the bed is Gunta Stolzl’s Bauhaus dorm blanket. Courtesy Wallace Sewell

In 1926, Gunta Stölzl, head of the Bauhaus’s weaving workshop (and one of many extraordinary women at the school), designed a patterned blanket that laid across beds in the Prellerhaus dormitory at Bauhaus Dessau.

The “Prellerdecke” blanket (“Preller” refers to painter Friedrich Preller and “decke” means bedcover in German) was intricate yet modern, with lines and colors that intersected to create a striped pattern. Stölzl’s students in her workshop handwove more than 100 of those blankets, which have all since been lost.

A vintage photograph of a Bauhaus dorm room. In the room is a bed that has a Prellerdecke blanket on it with intersecting lines.
Original Prellerdecke in a Bauhaus dorm alcove.
Courtesy Wallace Sewell
A dorm room with a bed that has the Wallace Sewell Prellerhaus blanket on it.
Wallace Sewell Prellerhaus blanket in the original Fallow color way.
Courtesy Wallace Sewell

Now, the blankets are coming back to celebrate the Bauhaus’s 100th anniversary this year. Jörg Klambt, founder of Designshop Bauhaus Dessau, commissioned London textile studio Wallace Sewell to recreate the blanket design.

A pile of folded colorful striped blankets.
The three color ways are Fallow (the original), Orchard, and Seal.
Courtesy Wallace Sewell
Two beds that have different striped blankets on them. Courtesy Wallace Sewell

Wallace Sewell referenced an archival photo of the original blanket to accurately capture the “rhythm and simplicity of Gunta’s design,” working closely with Stölzl’s daughter, Monika Stadler, in the process.

After detailed design development on small looms, the resulting Wallace Sewell Prellerhaus blankets incorporates a few modern updates. While the original was made from rayon, a popular material during the Bauhaus era, the new blankets use a more sustainable fiber, wool. The blankets also now come in two new color ways fit for a contemporary palette. The new color ways will also be available as cushions, scarves, and bags.

A striped blanket. On top of the striped blanket is a striped pillow. Hartmut Boesener courtesy Wallace Sewell

The designs will launch in July at Wallace Sewell, Designshop Bauhaus Dessau, the Tate Edit Shop at the Tate Modern in London, and the shops at the Guggenheim and the Cooper Hewitt in New York City.