This publication draws on sales catalogues and advertising brochures documenting the entire range of Ikora metalwork produced by WMF (W rttembergische Metallwarenfabrik AG, Geislingen) from the early 1920s until the 1960s. Even during the first world war, Hugo Debach, who would later become director-general of WMF, took the initiative in having experiments conducted in chemical and thermal tinting of metals. Shortly before 1927 he founded the Neue Kunstgewerbliche Abteilung (NKA: New Division for the Applied Arts) at WMF for upgrading metals. The brilliant colours and the boundless possibilities for design arising from this new technique met with resounding success at the time. Now pieces of Ikora metalwork by WMF are coveted as valuable collectors' items. The name Ikora, borrowed from a plant with brilliantly-hued flowers endemic to South-east Asia and sacred to the goddess Ixora, was designed to express the costly and exclusive quality of this line in metal products. Text in English and German