From 1919–1920 she and her husband lived abroad, first for a year in Norway, before embarking on a one-year study tour to Paris and the south of France.

[3] Although the Bauhaus claimed to welcome “any person of good repute, without regard to age or sex”, there was still a strong gender bias.

Her fellow students later admitted to Brandt that they had believed that there was no place in the metal workshop for women and so gave her dull, dreary work to do; later they got along well.

From late 1929 through 1932, Brandt was head of design at the Ruppel Metal Goods factory in Gotha, Germany, until she lost her job due to the ongoing Great Depression.

[8] Early in 1933, at the beginning of the Nazi period in Germany, Brandt first attempted to find work outside of the country, but family responsibilities called her back to Chemnitz.

In 1939 she became a member of the "Reichskulturkammer," the Nazi regime's official artists' organisation, in order to obtain art supplies, which would otherwise have been forbidden to her.

[9] After World War II, Brandt remained in Chemnitz to help rebuild her family's home, which had been severely damaged in the bombings.

[11] Brandt's designs for metal ashtrays, tea and coffee services, lamps, and other household objects are now recognized as among the best of the Weimar and Dessau Bauhaus.

[12] Beginning in 1926, Brandt also produced a body of photomontage work, though all but a few were not publicly known until the 1970s after she had abandoned the Bauhaus style and was living in Communist East Germany.

These photomontages often focus on the complex situation of women in the interwar period, a time when they enjoyed new freedoms in work, fashion and sexuality, yet frequently experienced traditional prejudices.

Much of Brandt’s energy was directed into her lighting designs, including collaborations with small number of Bauhaus colleagues and students.

This elegant pendant light made of aluminum featured a simple saucer shade combined with an innovative pulley system and counter-weight, which allowed the height of the lamp to be adjusted with ease; the pendant was used in multiple locations in the Dessau campus, including the metal, weaving and architecture department, as well as the dining room of Gropius’s own house.

By the 20th century there was precedence of images of working women situated in industrial environments, but Brandt opts to capture her craft in the metal that provides her reflection.

To this end, the metallic surface that reflects Brandt’s portrait resists a “soft” or “sentimental” effect, instead emanating a quiet coolness.

The reproduction rights to Brandt's original 1924 tea set were granted to Alessi, an Italian metalware design company, in 1985.