Woman's Slipper c. 1936

Melita Hofmann created this design for a woman's slipper, likely on paper with watercolor, during her lifetime, sometime between 1907 and 1976. In Hofmann’s time, there were many art and design schools teaching students the principles of design for industrial production. In the early- to mid-20th century, some schools, most famously the Bauhaus in Germany, embraced simplicity of form as a virtue, aligning their aesthetic principles with socialist political ideals. While this slipper design may have had something to do with that movement, we can see that it stops short of embracing pure utility, and the slight flourish in the form signals an attempt to offer something alluring to consumers of fashion. To understand the intention behind this design more fully, we might research periodicals and trade publications focused on shoe design during the artist's lifetime. The meaning of such an artwork is contingent on its social and institutional context.