Tinte trifft Tusche: Art Nouveau inkwells at the Couven Museum — Aachen

Between a pen and a page there used to be a small glass or bronze object on the desk, and around 1900 it was one of the places where designers tried out the new style. From 26 September the Couven Museum in Aachen shows some seventy inkwells and writing sets of the Jugendstil period, the German Art Nouveau, in an exhibition called Tinte trifft Tusche — ink meets India ink.

The objects come from the collection of Dr Julius Rohm, given to the Kreismuseum Zons in Dormagen, which lends them here. Set against them are new ink drawings by Stephan Wunsch, an artist from Aachen, who worked from the shapes of the inkwells and from the rooms of the museum itself. The Couven Museum is a bourgeois town house of the eighteenth century furnished as an interior of its time, and the writing objects sit in it as they once sat in houses like it.

The exhibition opens on the evening of Friday 25 September, in the presence of the collector, and runs through the winter until April 2027. Admission to the museum is free.

Practical details

• When: 26 September 2026 to 18 April 2027; opening Friday 25 September 2026 at 7pm
• Where: Couven Museum, Hühnermarkt 17, 52062 Aachen, Germany
• Opening hours: Tuesday and Wednesday 1pm to 5pm; Thursday to Sunday 10am to 5pm
• Admission: free
• Organised by: Couven Museum, Aachen, in cooperation with the Kreismuseum Zons, Dormagen

Cultural Heritage Online lists this exhibition for readers travelling in the Rhineland this winter.