1) 1955 – 1959
The modular principle was itself an element within a more extensive 'system' received by Braun design from the Ulm HfG. The company had been transformed by its encounter with the Ulm school, gaining a structured consistency that encompassed every aspect of what today we would call its 'visual' or ‘corporate identity'. From exhibition stands and display systems, product form, the distribution and labelling of operational controls, down to graphic and typographic forms, colours and packaging, every constituent related to every other as interlocked parts of a thoroughgoing unity. The standards governing this comprehensive and systematic coherence were set down by Ulm lecturer Otl Aicher between 1954 and1956. During the same period, indeed as part of the same thinking, Aicher’s colleague at the HfG, Hans Gugelot, applied the modular principle to his foundational audio designs for Braun – the G 11 radio, G 12 record player and PKG radio-phonograph.

Gugelot’s approach to modularity had two aspects. The first was to elevate to a constitutive principle of form the logic of substitution that is the underlying technological condition of mass-produced electronic circuitry. In this way, the constructive principle of the standardized component found outward expression in the clarity of relation between the new enclosures and the standardised receiver-amplifier modules that they housed. To a certain extent, it must be said, this was a strategic compromise, a means of reconciling the modernist imperative to assert the facts of industrial manufacture with a brief that was in essence one of finding modern forms for existing Braun technology – in other words, the counter-modernist practice of styling. Not confined to Gugelot's work, all of the early designs followed this scheme of expressed modular insertion: Gugelot and Lindinger’s Studio 1, Gugelot and Ram’s SK 4 and all of Hirche’s numerous furniture oriented designs. The result was that Wilhelm Wagenfeld’s PC 3 record player element of 1956 featured in all of the early designs that had a phono function (i.e. Studio 1, SK 4, PKG series, Atelier 1, G12, etc.).

More particular to Gugelot, the second aspect of early modularity consisted in the cellular relation of parts in the structural formation of integral wholes. Primarily this was worked out through the production of devices in standardized proportions. Such that, resting open on its stay, the leading edge of G 12 record player lid aligned with the top leading edge of the G 11 radio, whilst stacked vertically the two units combined to produce a unitary form. The height of this combination, in turn, corresponded to that of the FS G television set. Thus, functional units became systematically related elements of an integral whole. The same logic of regulated aggregation, the ‘building block’ principle, applied not only to the combination of separate devices but also to many of these units’ internal structure. Gugelot’s FS G television set and PKG designs, for example, were horizontally bisected between supporting plinths and functional elements, allowing the decomposition of singular units into constituent parts as use required. A clear line of connection therefore runs between Gugelot's work for Braun and his M 125 furniture system designs, the refinement of which circa 1955 for production through Bofinger coincided directly with his engagement by Braun.

2) 1959 - 1963
The distinctive character of this earliest form of modularity consisted in a very clear relation of parts to pre-given wholes - internally with regards to the product form, externally with regards to the product set. Thus, the modularity of the G 11 consisted in its possible status as an element within of a G 11 / G 12 combination and as an element within the totality of the G series: systematically related parts formed wholes, themselves parts systematically related to a whole. 

Dieter Ram’s hand in the development of the modular principle is to have expanded the scope of the whole to which the particular module might relate. With Rams and Müller's 1959 contribution to Wagenfeld’s PC 3 design, the module, released from its subordinate relation to a pre-given whole, was free to operate as a module on its own account. This promiscuous unit  was now available, in principle, to engage with any number of amplifying devices. Corresponding to the emancipation of the part was an enlargement of the whole. It developed from the aggregative formation of a single device, or a number devices within a particular product range, to become a systematically structured universe of functionally integrated and aesthetically consistent parts. In short, the Braun audio programm.

What were the immediate material conditions of this development? Terms of employment in the first years of Braun design must be counted as an inhibiting factor. In thinking through the implications of a systematic approach to design, the Ulm freelancers were confined by the limits to the specific designs assigned to them. Despite a common understanding of industrial design, this work pattern tended towards the development of stylistically distinct personal idioms. This led to a peculiar contradiction within the early designs undertaken by the Ulmers for Braun, in that they strove for systematicity and objectivity in a personal and subjective mode. However, around 1959, as the services of the Ulm working group and other external contributors were gradually dispensed with, and the work transferred to the company’s newly formed design department, the initial constraint on the modular principle’s application arising from such aesthetic plurality also fell away. At the same time, as a result of the division of labour within the newly formed design department, stylistic and functional consistency between the parts of audio range as a whole increased as the work necessary for their production increasingly fell to one person, an extraordinarily talented and energetic young man - Dieter Rams. Very quickly an overriding unity began to assert itself throughout the range, which for the first time assumed systematic form. The institution of Braun's own design department, and the allocation of the entire field of audio design to a single person established the conditions for the full development of the modular principle. The irony of systems design at Braun in its relation to the Ulm HfG is this: the HfG propagated an ideal of systems design at Braun whose actualization depended upon Braun breaking with the HfG. Whereas freelance contracts may be entered into as required, a system of systems cannot be assembled out of disparate fragments.

It is surely no coincidence that in 1959, the same year that Rams collaborated in the design of the PC 3-SV, the first fully modular rendering of PC 3 turntable chassis, he also produced one of the most succinct statements of the enlarged concept of modularity - the portable TP 1 radio-phonograph. In the years immediately following, this functional universe expanded exponentially. The PC 3 – SV module was rapidly developed in a close series of similar devices: the PCS 4, PCS 45 and PS 2. All of which were to be attached as systematic modular elements to a variety of amplifying units – the RT 20 and T 50 radio sets, as well as the new standalone amplifying units such as the CSV 10. At the same time, turntable chassis modules of this series found their way into integrated music systems from the SK phono super and Atelier series, through to the TC 45 and Audio 1. In this way the turntable constituent of a substantial integrated system could also be found in barely different form linked up to a battery operated transistor radio.

3) 1963 – 1970
Lasting only three to four years, the period of fully interchangeable light modules, of connecting small turntables to battery operated radios, was rather brief. Developments in the field of high fidelity sound reproduction finally put pay to this comprehensive approach to modularity. The PC 5 of 1962 was the first Braun turntable capable of rendering sound quality listenable by today’s standards. But its necessary bulk and weight precluded the kinds of flexible use to which the less substantial earlier phono units naturally lent themselves. Prioritising sound reproduction over flexibility of use was also, no doubt, a question of marketing. Whatever the reason, from ‘63 onwards application of the modular principle reduced to the ‘building block’ systems of fixed position audio devices. With regards to use, then, experiments in developing the modular principle came to a halt. With regards to aesthetics, however, the principle received its most rigorously systematic exposition. Throughout the 1960's Dieter Rams produced a series of mutually compatible and aesthetically integrated tuners, amplifiers, turntables and speaker units. In the literature on Rams it has become standard to refer to the ‘harmonious unity of parts’ as characteristic of his designs from this period. Whilst it is absolutely the case that what seems most necessary and rational in this work derives from a typographic mode of control over elements in the formation of a unity, the functional unit itself was not the ultimate object of Rams’ practice. We must look beyond the particular amplifier or tuner to the integrated totality of all amplifier, turntable, speaker, tuner, control and phono-receiver units to grasp the meaning and extent of the ‘harmonious unity’ in question. It is only at this level, at which parts themselves present as self-sufficient and individuated wholes that the implicit utopian content of ‘the whole’ as harmoniously unified totality of all parts within the whole is revealed. This relation was latently present within Gugelot’s Braun G series; under a remarkably fortuitous constellation of conditions, Rams achievement is to have made it explicit.

price: on application

The transition from 'natural' materials towards the manifestly industrial, and the blocking of anthropomorphism by a rejection of symmetry, adopting instead a more abstract, machineic formalism are both central elements around which Ram's developed his functionalist vocabulary throughout the 1960's. (Interesting to note also, the evolution of the Atelier series as a precondition for the Vitsoe 606 Universal Shelving System, a design that must have been in preparation contemporaneously with the Atelier 3. Although it never seems to be mentioned, the resemblance between the Atelier 3 (also the RCS 9) and the basic 606 element is striking. Also interesting, then, is the subterranean line of influence connecting Gugelot to the 606 design through the earlier Atelier models. Gugelot's relation to the Ram's shelving system design is generally thought through its difference from his own earlier M 125...)

price: £700 

Wagenfeld's key turntable design had been employed in numerous early Braun devices - Gugelot and Lindinger's Studio 1, Gugelot and Rams' SK phonosuper series, as well as many of Gugelot's own PKG series designs. The PC 3 - SV broke with its integration within audio systems to produce one of Braun's earliest modular system elements. The stand alone turntable was designed to be compatible both with the Rams' RT 20 and Braun and Eichler's  SK 2 radio sets. Compact dimensions render perfect for display.

dimensions: 21 x 10 x 30 cm

functionality: Fully functional on all speeds. Both needles present in rotating cartridge.

condition: Museum quality piece, unused new old stock. In mint condition, in original box with internal packing and literature.  No chips, scratches, cracks, scuffs or other marks. Felt pads on feet. Base board flat and unmarked. 

price: £450 

approx dimensions: 50 cm x 25.5 cm x 19 cm

voltage options: 110V / 125V / 150V / 220V / 240V

condition: Fully working on all frequencies and in excellent physical condition. All graphics intact. No loss, scratches or other damage to veneers. Backboard flat.

price: £750

Both speakers fully functional

materials: Rolled Alu mesh + lacquered wood

dimensions:  40 x 10.7 cm

condition: Offered in very good condition. Alu mesh is clean, flat and without dents. Paint finish shows one or two small chips but is otherwise in good order - no  gouges, cracks, splits, discolouration etc. 

A full condition report with further images is available on request.

price: £500

In Rams' and Gugelot's SK design form is determined entirely by reflection upon its constituent factors. Long radiused edges of bent steel and plexi-glass refer unambiguously to an industrial process of bending sheet materials, themselves industrially produced. This is underscored by restriction of these bends to a horizontal axis (the fold is taken to dissimulate the planar nature of the sheet), and again by the enclosure of the sheet metal corpus and plexi-glass cover within wooden elements on the opposing axis. Evidence of flatness is corroborated by the mounting of control knobs directly upon the surface and elsewhere by its slotted piercing of the surface of grills, thereby also revealing the thickness of the sheet. We have become accustomed to design that makes a fetish of its technical aspect. What makes the SK series as startling to us now as it might have been to those used to finding audio equipment embedded in heavy pieces of wooden furniture is the simple clarity of this industrial self-presentation.

dimensions: 58 x 29 x 24 cm

functionality: Fully functional

condition: Museum quality piece. Veneers in excellent order. Paint finish perfect with consistent colour. All graphics complete. Acrylic lid unscratched. With complete set of instructions, guarantees, platter card, double-sided Braun programm poster and Braun test single.

this design price range:  £1,000 

price: £400

price: £300

approx dimensions: 50 cm x 25.5 cm x 19 cm

voltage options: 110V / 125V / 150V / 220V / 240V

condition: Fully working on all frequencies and in excellent physical condition. All graphics intact. No loss,  scratches or other damage to veneers. A few darker area of spotting and more pronounced figuring of the grain on the upper surface but it is not clear that this is not in the character of the wood. Backboard flat.

price: £700

other designs by Weiss:

HL 1 multiwind   1961

HLD 231   1964

KMM 1 aromatic   1965

TGF 1 permanent   1968

KSM 11   1969

HL 70   1971

price: £120

DN 50 visotronic     1979

H 10  1983

MPZ 7 citromatic   1992

condition: full working order, barely used. With original box, packing materials and paperwork.

price: £150

In the same strand of early '70s high-tech, 2nd generation Braun design, see:  HL 70 in orange, phase 1 alarm, KF 21 coffee filter and HLD 1000 hair dryer.

dimensions: 10.7 x 15.1 x 8 cm

condition: Fully functional and in excellent condition, with packaging.

price: £220 

price: on application

The contradiction between concrete functional self-evidence and a staged presentation of technology in the abstract arises from a fundamental tension within Functionalist design itself. For the latter's goal to root out and eliminate the decorative always held a certain ambivalence. Despite itself, Functionalism tended toward the decorative through its very asceticism, ending up with a semblance of the functional, that is, the  appearance of the prioritisation of truth over appearance. Throughout the '60s this internal tension was exacerbated by increasingly strident demands for technological novelty coming from the unruly world upon which functionalism had once attempted to impose order. As a result, the spartan description of technology as a means reverted instead to an affirmation of technology as an end. 

The full significance of the KF 20/ 21 design becomes apparent only retrospectively from the standpoint of the KF 40 of 1984. Issued in 1972, in many respects the KF 20/ 21 design belonged to the period of Braun design prior to the Gillette acquisition of 1968. For although in its styling the KF 20/ 21 addressed the consumer precisely as a consumer, as opposed to an operator, in quality, price and form it made no such concessions. Foremost, it was expensive. Costly polycarbonate plastic used to produce the crisply moulded casings gave durable and consistent glossed surfaces; the distinctive separation of reservoir and hotplate was made possible by an extravagant duplication of heating elements. It is as if the only constraints bearing upon the design process had been imaginative. There's something beguiling in such refusal of that most basic limiting factor – cost, just as there is something directly utopian in a design process stimulated by the impulse to produce something satisfactory, regardless of any existing need for it. Such a procedure implicitly challenges the existing. One might call this the cryptic politics of bad business. It tends to be subject to correction.

This brings us to the Braun KF 40. Whereas the KF 20 had been oriented towards the consumer only somewhat abstractly through a dramatization of its technological aspect (fittingly, the device appears aboard the Nostromo in Ridely Scott’s 'Alien'), the KF 40 was a design shaped entirely by analysis of the market. The general aim had been to reposition the company in the upper middle segment of the French and German filter coffee maker markets, and to create and opening in the American. To achieve this, production costs of the KF 40 were required to be 60% that of the KF 20. Accordingly, polycarbonate was substituted for polypropylene, soft striations on the body were then called for to compensate for irregularities in the surface, the heating elements were unified and the casing acquired a more lumpen form. By its nature industrial design is constrained at every point. But it is not the degree of compromise that ensured the relative banality of KF 40. Rather it is the design's adaptation to market conditions at the level of its inception that did the job. Despite the almost hysterically heightened positivity of its relation to the abstractly technological, the KF 20 / 21 retains a speculative moment in which it projects itself beyond the already existing. the KF 40, on the other hand, is absolutely subordinate to the empirical world,  marking the point at  which Braun design's utopian impulse was finally extinguished. 

The move from a holistic design program to a global sales strategy at Braun was not, of course, limited to this device. Waxlax, appointed by Gillette as Braun’s company director merely instructed a reorientation in this case that had been generally inevitable since the 1968 acquisition. As the KF 40 was commissioned the photographic lines were terminated. Audio was to follow. Kitchen appliances and personal hygiene lines were expanded, both production and design quality diminished…  It seemed that the condition of successful global sales lay in mediocre design.  Returning to the KF 20/ 21 from the beginning of the demise of Braun design somewhere in the mid-1980’s, we can read in its form both an anticipation of the programm’s fate and its extraordinary refusal.

see also:

phase 1

HL 70 

HLD 1000

condition: fully functional and in excellent order

price: £200
 

gift of A. C. to das programm

item not for sale

All incremental markings have been eliminated to leave a dial consisting only in untethered Helvetica numerals. Their position appears fixed only by a slightly heavier weight. Perhaps the idea was to communicate an easier, more laid back attitude to time keeping. The virtue of Lubs' original design, however, lies precisely in the fact that it does not seek to communicate anything at all beyond the device's function as a chronometer.

For much the same reason, the AW 10 serves as a useful corrective to the recent wave of  so-called 're-issued' Braun wristwatches. Of these entirely new designs, the ladies' watches (Braun never produced watch designs according to sex but only according to the need to know the time) are greater in every dimension than the AW 10. The mens' watches are larger to an almost grotesque degree. The idea that a watch, indeed any object, should symbolise the wearer's status is, of course, absolutely anathema to the Braun project as it used to be.

analogue wrist watches see also:

AW 10 (black face / grey bezel)

AW 20 (black face w/o numerals)

AW 50 T

body / bezel: black thermo plastic

approx diameter: 33 mm

approx thickness: 6 mm

price: £140

price: £150

Price: £50

gift of A. C. to das programm

item not for sale

Also suitable for use with T 1000 / T 1000 CD  receivers.

Price: £45

price: £55

See also Rams and Greubel's DS 1 sesamat can opener of the same year. Prior to these designs, the pair had worked together extensively on the Lectron System, and subsequently on the AB 2 table clock.

price: £160

price: £65

All incremental markings have been eliminated to leave a dial consisting only in untethered Helvetica numerals, their position appears fixed only by their slightly heavier weight. Perhaps the idea was to communicate an easier, more laid back attitude to time keeping. However, the virtue of Lubs' original design lies precisely in the fact that it does not seek to communicate anything at all beyond the device's function as a chronometer.

For much the same reason, the AW 10 serves as a useful corrective to the recent wave of so-called 're-issued' Braun wristwatches. Of these entirely new designs, the ladies' watches (Braun never produced watch designs according to sex but only according to the need to know the time) are greater in thickness and diameter than the AW 10. The mens' watches are considerably larger. The idea that a watch, indeed any object, should symbolise the wearer's status is, of course, absolutely anathema to the Braun project as it used to be.

analogue wrist watches see also:

AW 10 (alu face / black bezel)

AW 20 (black face w/o numerals)

AW 50 T

body / bezel: grey thermo plastic

approx diameter: 33 mm

approx thickness: 6 mm

price: £150

It carries a curiously spiritual implication. The name 'permanent' refers to the device's sparking mechanism. Braun engineers had developed an ignition system that for the first time dispensed with the need for batteries. Hence the claim in the instructions that the permanent is 'endowed with almost infinite life'. The 'permanence of the soul', perhaps. It is this unexpected conjunction of mechanism and the particular immateriality of fire that makes the TFG 1 such a fascinating example of early Braun utopianism, one that suggests a certain,  somewhat less than rational affinity with the techno-mystical tendencies of Russian constructivism. 

The use of transparent casings might be considered a minor functionalist strategy, one also pursued by Rams and Greubel in their Lectron System designs of the year earlier. Editions of Rams' phase one alarm - another preeminently mechanical device, all the more so for its space age styling - and T 2 table lighter were also later issued with transparent casings, as were Lubs' domo fix, flex and set wall clocks. At around the same time that this 'transparent' strand was developed a countervailing tend towards opacity also appeared. Particularly in the sphere of audio design 1968 saw the introduction of inscrutably dense devises, black but for a couple of instructive touches of colour, as in the case of the PS 500. From this year paint finish on the body of audio separates was switched from light grey to structured anthracite, shifting attention away from the object quality of the device and onto the controls. Design was to render operation comprehensible, not the device self-evident in all its aspects. Of course, there was an element of subterfuge in this. The technology was no less comprehensible than it had ever been. 

see also:

TFG 1 permanent acrylic  with presentation case

TFG 1 permanent gold-plated

condition: Museum quality. Unusually complete with full set of guarantees, instruction, box and packing.

price: on application

Other important Weiss designs for Braun include:

HL 1 Multiwind

HL 70

TFG 1 Permanent

HLD 2

H 7 (with Dieter Rams)

price: £180

condition: fully functional and in excellent order. With original box.

price: £120

price: £65 (MX 32 sold separately)

Otl Aicher, one time rector of the Ulm school, was employed in 1955 to renew the Braun corporate identity. So, from produt markings to literature, Akzidenz entered the vocabulary of Braun design at every level. Other 'Ulm' notions were also transmitted to Braun by the early working groups, notions that linked formal concerns to social purpose.

The tension between the use of these 'historical' numerals and the more high-tech form of the AB 21 s body dramatises a crises in functionalist design arising from a contradiction between its social and commercial purpose. Arguably by 1978, when the AB 21/s was issued, the tension had already resolved. Braun functionalism found itself eclipsed by a kind of technological expressivism and its social commitments set aside. In this light, the more reconciled relation of face and body characteristic of the AB 22 signals the entrenchment of conservatism in Braun industrial design, whilst the AB 21/s appears as a poignant late '70s admission that the game was up...

In this connection, see also Florian Seiffert's KF 20/21 coffee filter design of 1976. 

a large 1.5 v battery powers a sweeping second hand and truly startling alarm

price: £120

Other important Weiss designs for Braun:

HL 1 Multiwind

HL 70

TFG 1 Permanent

HLD 2

condition: Museum quality, barely used and fully functional with box and polystyrene packing. No paperwork.

 price: £250

Working with Lubs, Rams' other contributions to Braun bedside alarm design are the AB 20 exact (the tb without the protective timezone front guard), the AB 21/s, and the AB 22. In collaboration with Jurgen Greubel, Rams also designed the AB 2, the only Braun clock in the design of which Lubs had no hand. 

condition: fully functional in excellent order

price: £160

Weiss brought an Ulmer’s analytic sensibility to product design, first breaking devises down to their constituent operational units, then articulating these parts in functionally self-evident assemblages. The high degree of abstraction to which Weiss' work attained followed from the unusually stringent application of this procedure. In the literal sense, he thought the device through from point zero, as if no other fan, coffee grinder or hairdryer had yet been produced. This refusal to fall back on received notions of generic form, the figurative sense in which a fan may 'resemble' a fan, led instead to works marked by a pronounced singularity. In this connection, and given more space, one might develop the utopian implications of Weiss' method... 

Arguably, one of the finest of Weiss' works for Braun is the HL 1, opposite, an extraordinary conglomeration of cylindrical blade head, plexiglass cowl and motorblock - texture, form, and mass. Also noteworthy is Weiss' KMM 1 of two years later and 1968  TFG 1 permanent table lighter.

Example held in MoMA permanent collection.

See also this HL 1 - unused with original box and full set of paperwork.

price range (this design): £150 - £250 depending upon condition, completeness, etc.

In its emphasis on sculptural formal unity, Müller's work was close to Weiss. As it was in his clear expression of and distinction between functional elements. But the extreme severity by which this distinction was imposed: motor block / gearing / tool, aligns him with Rams. Regular horizontal cuts divide the body into functional strata. The bowl conforms with this regime by the alignment of its leading top edge with the upper line of the gearing block, at one and the same time integrating and dividing.

Müller's organicism, on the other hand, was his own, such complex and decidedly non-orthogonal forms appearing nowhere else within the Braun lexicon. He deployed the device of imposing functional division upon a unitary curvilinear form in a number of important designs for Braun, in the iconic SM 3 sextant (a collaboration with Gugelot). In this connection it is also interesting to think of his early work for German pen manufacturer Lamy. 

condition: museum quality piece, fully working and  unusually complete: blender / processor / blade rack / coffee grinder / citruss press / dough hook / beater / small bowl / spatula / colour brochure / illustrated instructions for use (English language) / guarantee pamphlet

price:  £300

Example held in MoMA permanent collection.

See also this ET 22 of close to a decade earlier, almost exactly twice the thickness of the ET 66, the last before the transition was made to to LCD display.

condition: Full working order and excellent condition. With unmarked slip-case. 

price: £180

An example is held in the MoMA permanent collection.

see also: KF 21 and phase 1

dimensions: 10.7 x 15.1 x 8 cm

condition: Fully functional and in excellent condition

price: £180

condition: Excellent - casing is consistent white, unmarked. Logotype fully intact. Chrome shows very minute bubbling in one or two place.

price: £100

price: £350

condition: Both barometer and clock are fully functional in unused condition, in box with packaging (but without instructions for use)

this design price range: £250 - £400 depending upon condition, completeness, etc.

Touch pad numerals set in classical Akzidenz Grotesk, with original instructions/ box and Braun marked wallet.

price: £130

price: £5

price: £300

The grinding mechanism is a stone-mill, as opposed to hammer, giving both fine control over grade and a highly consistent ground. Grounds are collected in a detachable caddy, removing the need to fish about between blades. An aluminium wall-mounting bracket is engaged on parallel tracks to the rear of the device, and may be removed entirely if desired. The same grinding system was also employed in Weiss' KMM 1 design of 1965. Braun abandoned it in the mid-'70s in favour of the hammer mechanism, with its more restricted range of use but considerably lower production costs.

price:  £150 

condition: Unused condition. In packaging, with case, instructions and full set of unused brushes. Unfortunately, being over thirty years old, the re-chargeable battery no longer holds a charge. Offered as  display item.

price: £70

price: £200

price: £80

price: £950

price: £1200

price: £775 

price: £1800

price: £1,825

 Almost everything 'clock' in the traditional sense having been abstracted, what remains is pure chronograph. Markings are graphic perfection. Numerals in Akzidenz Grotesk (as opposed to Univers in use for much of the 1980's). The relative virtues of Akzidenz and Univers figures are debatable from the standpoint of clarity. No competition when it comes to character, it seems to us - the wind-sock 1, swan-neck 2, the 7! A joy. Sleek, rigorous and minimal overall, in popping orange colourway.

face diameter:  200 mm

materials / condition: Quartz movement. Accepts 1 AA battery. Body plastic, face painted aluminium. Offered in full working order and in excellent condition. A couple of very light scratches around the fixing point at the back.

price: £180

price: £200

condition: Fully functional and excellent condition. Box shows small tear with sellotape repair.

price: £200

The set is wall-mountable by adhesive pad or screw fixing. Elements clip into the mounting case. Alarm is set by winding; mechanical bell.

Condition: New and unused in box with instructions 

Price: £150

price: £300

Almost everything 'clock' in the traditional sense having been abstracted, what remains is pure chronograph. Markings are graphic perfection. Numerals in Akzidenz Grotesk (as opposed to Univers in use for much of the 1980's). The relative virtues of Akzidenz and Univers are debatable from the standpoint of clarity. No competition when it comes to character, it seems to us - the wind-sock 1, the 2, the 7! A joy. Sleek, rigorous and minimal overall. Classic Braun - black face with white hands and numerals.

face diameter: 200 mm

materials/ condition: Quartz movement. Accepts 1 AA battery.  Body plastic, face painted aluminium. Offered in full working order and in excellent condition with instructions for use and fold-out Braun clock programm poster.

 price: £180

Dimensions: 10.7 x 15.1 x 8 cm

Condition: Fully functional and in excellent condition

price: £200

approx. dimensions: 18 cm x 10 cm x 8 cm

supply: 220 V ~ /50 Hz 

price: £180

Example held in the MoMA permanent collection. 

condition: Museum quality, excellent condition. Fully functional with instructions for use. One  very slight nick to the enamel. 

price: £250

price: £160

see:

domoset

domoflex

domo fix

see also:

AW 10 wrist watch

price: £210

condition: Fully functional and in very good order. No chips, scratches or other damage.

price: £70

Distinct from this, Rams' form here is comprehensively curvilinear. And unlike Lubs' work, it is not entirely abstract but moves, albeit slightly, towards figuration. The elongated side panels of the AB 2 begin to resemble 'legs', whilst the form overall recalls that of the grandfather clock. The AB 2  suggests an altogether new idiom of clock design, an alternative universe of vaguely 'post-modern' Braun clocks. Yet this was Rams and Greubel's only clock collaboration; after it the range reverted to variation of the established template.

see also: this black example

condition: Perfect. Some difference in the shade of green between battery compartment panel and body, but this may be as a result of materials used rather than age. Unboxed.

price: £130

 Example held in MoMA permanent collection.

condition: unused with original box and full set of paperwork 

price: £300

condition: fully functional. All markings intact. 'time' and 'signal' controls show slight fading.

price: £160

price: £110

see also: Seiffert's extraordinary KF 21 Aromaster of 1976

price: £35

In high Ulm tradition, Fischer's work for Braun tended towards complex, multi-functional systems. Yet his Stab shaver series designs are just as much products of Ulm, objects whose formal simplicity is the result of an analytic method, as opposed to a merely  stylistic asceticism. The sliding switch and finely ridged anti-slip body are elements of a design entirely organised around haptic operational factors. See also Fischer's Parat BT collaboration with Rams, and, also with Rams, his KM 2 multiwerk. 

Screen print logotype on striated anodised aluminium.

price: £75

price: £150

In sum, a trove of beautiful material; every print deserves framing. The following Rams designs appear in the print series:

 T 1000 Worldreceiver, 1963, Sk 4, Phono super, 1956; TP 1, Phono-Transistor, 1969; Studio 2, 1959; LE 1, 1959; Atelier 3 Kompaktgert, 1962; PS 45 turntable, 1962; TC 20 1963; TS 45, 1964; TG 60 Reel to Reel, 1965; L450 Flat Speaker, 1965; CSV 250, 1956; Regie 308, 1973. 

price: on application

includes: TS 40 control unit / FS 6 Television / RCS 9 control unit / PCS 5 record-player / T 1000 world receiver / T 510 radio / PCS 45 record-player + CSV 10 amplifier / Atelier 3 / Phonosuper SK 61 / CET 15 tuner / CSV 13, CSV 60 stereo amplifier / Phonosuper SK 55 / TC 20 / T 580 Universal radio / PS 2 record-player / PCV 4 turntable-amplifier case / audio 1

see here for further images

dimensions: 21 x 30 cm

condition: Excellent. A couple of ball point notes in neat hand on price list leaf. 

price this design: £250

includes: TS 40 control unit / FS 6 Television / RCS 9 control unit / PCS 5 record-player / T 1000 world receiver / T 510 radio / PCS 45 record-player + CSV 10 amplifier / Atelier 3 / Phonosuper SK 61 / CET 15 tuner / CSV 13, CSV 60 stereo amplifier / Phonosuper SK 55 / TC 20 / T 580 Universal radio / PS 2 record-player / PCV 4 turntable-amplifier case / audio 1

see here for further images

dimensions: 21 x 30 cm

condition: Excellent. A couple of ball point notes in neat hand on price list leaf.

price this design: £250
 

audio 300 - Hi-Fi stereo receiver with the PS 420 built-in record-player

CE 1000/2 - Hi-Fi stereo tuner

Studio 500 - Hi-Fi stereo system comprised of the CE 500 tuner, the CSV 500 amplifier and the PS 500 record-player

Good design is the civilised and aesthetic face of a Braun product. Behind it lies dynamic technical perfection. World-wide tests by experts have proven it.

price: £--

dimensions: 31 mm x 15 mm 

price: on application

Unattributed design. Date of issue  prior to 1998 logotype re-design.

dimensions: diameter 55mm

price: on application

(a 25mm diameter version of the badge without central logo is available for £1 + post & packing to those that like Braun)

price: £1 + post

The problem of 'the new man' has  roots in German Pietist theology. Salvation demands moral improvement. But the impulse towards the good is nowhere to be found within corrupt existence, whilst divine assistance in 'putting on the new man' robs the soul of its achievement. Transformation, indeed, a self-transformation is both necessary and seemingly impossible.

The problem persisted throughout the 17th, 18th & 19th Centuries preserved within the institutional development of rational theology into rational morality and finally into political philosophy. From the standpoint of the problem's ultimate and finally adequate construal, this history is constituted as a series of distortions of suppressed social content.  Albeit in an alienated form, it is the concept of political utopia that is ultimately at stake in the dilemmas of spiritual and moral self-cultivation. For, once positivism has swept away all transcendent causes as theological cobwebs, where amongst the rubble of the existing is located the ground of transition to the fundamentally different?

Arguably, not within the sphere of personal grooming.  A bitter phenomenon of the crisis of actual universal social change is its false ideal resolution at the level of the individual and singular. Perhaps 'rational' industrial design never was convincingly posited as the agent of transition to a truly new form of social life; it was insufficiently transcendent, too entangled with the processes of development whose energies require redirection. At least  the purpose was stated. No small thing in itself. By the 1990s the Braun company's utopian commitments of 40 years earlier had quite fallen away. It was content to play the part of grace to the private and consolatory miracle of the consumer's aesthetic self-transformation, as if transformation of another kind had never been considered...

price: £5

see also:

dice set

domino set

price: £300

According to Rams, the purpose was to dispel the mystery of electronics by encouraging children to engage in the construction of their own operational systems - radios, Morse transmitters, etc. Most modules have transparent perspex walls through which the electronic component housed can be directly observed, whilst the module's opaque upper surface is printed with the diagrammatic icon corresponding to its contents. A classic piece of Rams 'New Functionalism' - function, here, is precisely the communication of function. Rams' Lectron System design is held in MoMA’s permanent collection ( and see here for a description and images that I appear to to have involuntarily - insofar as my permission was not sought - donated to the museum).

price (this piece): £150

price range (this design): £100 - £200 depending upon condition, completeness, etc.