Lot Essay
Schmidt was a fellow pupil of Hans Vollmer at the Kunstgewerbeschule, studying architecture under Hoffmann from 1899 to 1901. Hoffmann wrote of his pupil at the end of his course: 'He has, as an architect, achieved everything that one can expect in this area. He has shown uncommon and outstanding good skills'.
Together with Vollmer, Schmidt found steady work producing designs for the basketware firm of Prag-Rudniker, who were one of the earliest commercial outlets sympathetic to the 'modern' designs being produced by members of the Vienna Secession and later the Wiener Werkstätte.
The timeless simplicity of this design and the combination of wood with cane was to be echoed in the work of the French modernist designer Francis Jourdain, more than twenty-five years later.
See: Das Interieur, Vol. IV, 1903, p. 204 (reproduced right).
Together with Vollmer, Schmidt found steady work producing designs for the basketware firm of Prag-Rudniker, who were one of the earliest commercial outlets sympathetic to the 'modern' designs being produced by members of the Vienna Secession and later the Wiener Werkstätte.
The timeless simplicity of this design and the combination of wood with cane was to be echoed in the work of the French modernist designer Francis Jourdain, more than twenty-five years later.
See: Das Interieur, Vol. IV, 1903, p. 204 (reproduced right).