Unlike the exhibition catalogue ‘Original Bauhaus’, which we designed in parallel, this book is not presented in a prestigious and festive format with a linen cover and embossing. Instead, its design is simple and practical. The book is meant to get dirty. It is bound in greyboard (in german: Maschinengraupappe) and fits neatly on a photocopier. When open, it is exactly A3 size.

The book contains teaching materials; it is a workbook – one that teachers can leave on the photocopier in the corridor. Through the visual concept, too, we have chosen to celebrate – rather than conceal – the aesthetics of working, archiving, collecting, dust and discovery. We have decided not to colour-correct, crop or retouch the images, but to leave them in their raw form as they were filed away in the archive. The fact that these are worksheets selected from the archive and stored there for 100 years – and not museum art – must not be lost. Black card, grey card, dog-eared pages, colour scales, archivists’ notes, printed scans: how beautifully and gracefully they hace withstood the ravages of time; how lovely the disorder within the orderly filing system.