tao te ching / the space within defines the pot

Above One of a series of posters (2023) intended to commemorate the Index of American Design, a Depression-era US government program, which commissioned unemployed graphic designers / illustrators to make detailed renderings of historic craft and folk art. The original paintings, now in public domain, can be accessed on the website of the National Gallery of Art.

I was first introduced to Lao-Tse’s famous sayings from the Tao Te Ching in the summer of 1964 when, at age seventeen, I studied for the summer in California at Pond Farm with Marguerite Wildenhain. In 1919, she had been among the first students at the Weimar Bauhaus, where Itten was one of her teachers. A few days ago, I found the passage noted below.

•••

Jack Pritchard, “Gropius, the Bauhaus and the Future” in Journal of the Royal Society of Arts. Vol 117 No 5150 (January 1969), pp. 75-94—

When discussing problems of space, Johannes Itten [head of the Bauhaus foundations course] was fond of quoting from Lao-Tse, who in the sixth century BC wrote [in revised wording]:

Thirty spokes converge at the hub,
But it is the space between the spokes that forms the essence of the wheel.

The walls of a vessel are made of clay, but its essence is determined by the space within the pot.…

• This saying is also referred to in a recent video on ART, DESIGN AND GESTALT THEORY: The Film Version.