Lot Essay
Baillie Scott, perhaps above all other British designers of the Arts and Crafts movement, was the artist whose work found the closest affinity and accord with the ideals of the Modern Movement in Germany. His commission to re-decorate the Dining Room and Drawing Room at the Palace of Darmstadt for Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig of Hesse in 1896/7, marked the beginning of his association with the German Arts and Crafts movement which was to last at least another ten years. By the turn of the century Scott's work had been extensively illustrated and discussed in publications which were keenly read throughout Europe such as The Studio and Academy Architecture, and in consequence his work was brought to the attention of a broadly sympathetic audience. In 1902 his acceptance was assured when he was awarded the highest prize in the competition Haus eines Kunstfreundes, organised by the architect Herman Muthesius. Muthesius was Baillie Scott's most articulate and tireless advocate; writing in Das englische Haus, (1904/5), Muthesius describes Scott's work as breathing '..poetry and spiritual warmth..', where every room '..is an individual creation, with whole elements not present as a matter of chance, but rather (are) derived from the main concept.' This emphasis on the concept of the whole interior as an individual work of art was central to modern German architectural philosophy of the time, and was explored at length by Heinrich Waentig (op. cit.). Looking back in 1909 on the developments of the previous decade, he wrote: '..The movement (in Germany) achieved perhaps even greater perfection with M. H. Baillie Scott, who took as his concept of the house an internally and externally unified and interrelated organism, beyond the combination of good furnishings which had been been common up to then.'
Baillie's Scott's most creative association with Germany was in producing designs for the Dresdener Werkstätten für Handwerkskunst in Dresden, run by Karl Schmidt, and for A. Wertheim in Berlin, who between them exhibited at least four interiors between 1903 and 1906, including the Ladies Drawing Room from which the present cabinet orginates. Scott's scheme for this interior, with its subtle colouring used in conjunction with simple patterns and motifs derived from Nature, demonstrated all the qualities of unity and 'Innigkeit' ('inner warmth') so much admired by his German peers. The present cabinet itself encapsulates these virtues with its elegant, restrained exterior concealing the more complex but equally elegant interior with its mass of short drawers and small central cabinet, which in turn opens to reveal the clear bright space behind it, framed by the richly decorated inner face of the doors. The effect captivated Waentig whose visit to the Dresden exhibition in 1903 was his first contact with the Modern Movement in Germany. He found the exhibition full of a promise which '..German idealism at that time had built up to us like a Christmas tale.. ', and recalled amongst his vivid memories of the exhibition '..Baillie Scott's gray boudoir with its black furniture in alder and pearwood in which the mother-of-pearl and ivory intarsia gleam like jewels, while the quivering glow of the fireplace, fighting with the winter sunshine which is muted by bright blue curtains, plays upon the lilac-violet cushions'.
For contemporary discussion of Baillie's Scott's relevance to the German Modern Movement, see: Herman Muthesius, Das englische Haus, Berlin, 1904/5.
Baillie's Scott's most creative association with Germany was in producing designs for the Dresdener Werkstätten für Handwerkskunst in Dresden, run by Karl Schmidt, and for A. Wertheim in Berlin, who between them exhibited at least four interiors between 1903 and 1906, including the Ladies Drawing Room from which the present cabinet orginates. Scott's scheme for this interior, with its subtle colouring used in conjunction with simple patterns and motifs derived from Nature, demonstrated all the qualities of unity and 'Innigkeit' ('inner warmth') so much admired by his German peers. The present cabinet itself encapsulates these virtues with its elegant, restrained exterior concealing the more complex but equally elegant interior with its mass of short drawers and small central cabinet, which in turn opens to reveal the clear bright space behind it, framed by the richly decorated inner face of the doors. The effect captivated Waentig whose visit to the Dresden exhibition in 1903 was his first contact with the Modern Movement in Germany. He found the exhibition full of a promise which '..German idealism at that time had built up to us like a Christmas tale.. ', and recalled amongst his vivid memories of the exhibition '..Baillie Scott's gray boudoir with its black furniture in alder and pearwood in which the mother-of-pearl and ivory intarsia gleam like jewels, while the quivering glow of the fireplace, fighting with the winter sunshine which is muted by bright blue curtains, plays upon the lilac-violet cushions'.
For contemporary discussion of Baillie's Scott's relevance to the German Modern Movement, see: Herman Muthesius, Das englische Haus, Berlin, 1904/5.