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AN ENQUIRING EYE: PROPERTY FROM A DISTINGUISHED PRIVATE COLLECTORSimplicity as Luxury. The Early Wiener Werkstätte and the design principles of Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser developed from Arts and Crafts IdeasIn 1903, the Viennese painter Koloman Moser, the architect Josef Hoffmann and the textile industrialist Fritz Waerndorfer founded the Wiener Werkstätte Productivgenossenschhaft von Kunsthandwerkern (Vienna Workshop Production Cooperative of Artisans). Its artistic objective was based on the ideal of the Gesamtkunstwerk as developed by the Vienna Secession. The Wiener Werkstätte must be seen in the context of the search for a modern, contemporary expression of form found throughout the Western world at the beginning of the 1890s. Ideologically, the Arts and Crafts Movement in England in the 1850s had already established the theoretical foundations for it, namely the sociocritical reform efforts of the likes of John Ruskin and William Morris, which were a reaction to the negative social and aesthetic effects of the Industrial Revolution. Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser will refer to them in their first program for the Wiener Werkstätte from 1905. Ruskin and Morris called for a return to preindustrial, craft-based manufacturing methods and promised that this would cure the coarsening of taste and society of the time. The former was the result of an “anything goes” mentality demanded by cheap substitute materials and techniques. Cheap mass produced products had flooded the markets that suddenly needed short-lived fashions to stimulate mass consumption and increasing profits. At the same time, however, the dictates of artistic authority hindered the realization of the ideal that the Arts and Crafts Movement in England had identified with the middle Ages: putting artisans and artists on equal footing in the wake of industrial manufacturing based on the division of labour, artisans mutated into labourers. The goal of the Arts and Crafts Movement in England was a return to craft production to give back labourers pleasure in their work and thus their dignity. It was the merit of the Vienna Secession, founded in 1897, of which protagonists of the Wiener Werkstätte were among its founding members, to have given a modern contemporary form to this concept. The members of the Vienna Secession called for developing an autonomous, modern, Austrian bourgeois style. Borrowing from the British Arts and Crafts Movement, the Secessionists adopted the credo of the unity of the arts, thus negating the established hierarchical separation of the fine and the applied arts. Until then in Austria, that ideal could be realized only under extremely difficult working conditions and was thwarted by the fundamental irreconcilability of the manufacturing trade and the arts. The direct contact between artists and artisans made it possible to implement the artistic design of all aspects of daily life, from architecture and interior design to fashion to postcards, with uncompromising artisanal quality. Under the primacy of implementing individual artistic expression, the Wiener Werkstätte created, up to its liquidation in 1932, a kaleidoscope of unmistakably recognizable yet constantly changing products. Taking up the ideals of sound workmanship, honesty in the choice of materials and clarity of forms without any superfluous decoration as coined by William Morris and John Ruskin for the Arts and Crafts Movement, the founders of the Wiener Werkstätte amalgamated this with ideas from the Vienna Secession. In the production, artistic designers and artisans signed the executed products with their monograms next to each other. For the Wiener Werkstätte Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser established an overall graphic Design. Forms designed by them for the Secession permeated everything with the association´s name on it: brochures, posters business cards etc. – all had a unified design, as did the ads the Wiener Werkstätte made for itself and its customers. The Wiener Werkstätte succeeded in realizing the idea of unifying artistic design, artisanal production, and commercial viability. They established a new idea of luxury: not based on the choice and sumptuous use of precious materials, but on the beauty and clarity of the design and artisanal execution of the object. The Wiener Werkstätte, initially established to be only a silver workshop, realized their ideals of production in the best sense of the word in their metal works. Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser were the primary designers of the products, actualizing their aesthetic visions with the help of the metalworkers, goldsmiths and silversmiths who handcrafted their pieces. Initially, geometric contours, stereo metric forms and simple decoration characterized their designs. Until 1907, the Wiener Werkstätte produced vessels out of both precious and base metals with both smooth surfaces and decorative hammer finishes. Like the Gitterkörbe (latticework baskets) they produced in these early years, the vessel´s designs were rooted in basic geometric forms. The latticework objects were a great commercial success. In 1904, Koloman Moser used the technique for the first time for large jardinières. The square was the basic module for these new products, produced in either painted metal or silver. When Koloman Moser left the “WW” in 1907, the style of the works in metal changed drastically. The designers felt they had to offer their customers something new. Now the vessels showed curves and rounded shapes and were adorned with floral and foliage motifs. The establishment of simple luxury and taste for a small group of customers, mostly in family relations with each other, that characterizes the early period of the Wiener Werkstätte remains their greatest contribution to the development of 20th century design.Dr. Rainald FranzCurator, Glass and Ceramics Collection, MAK – Museum of Applied Arts, ViennaCurator, Josef Hoffmann: Progress by Beauty, MAK, Vienna, December 10th 2020-April 18th 2021

JOSEF HOFFMANN (1870-1956)

Rare Soliflower Vase, model no. M 0235, circa 1904

Details

JOSEF HOFFMANN (1870-1956)
Rare Soliflower Vase, model no. M 0235, circa 1904
executed by the Wiener Werkstätte, Austria
silvered metal
11 ½ in. (28 cm) high
stamped with rose mark, WW and artist's monogram JH

Literature

O. Scheffers, 'Josef Hoffmann, Koloman Moser', Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration, April-September 1905, vol. IXX, p. 4
Schmuck-Tischgerät aus Österreich, exh. cat., Galerie am Graben, Augsburg, 1978, p. 43
P. Noever, Der Preis Der Schoenheit, 100 Jahre Wiener Werkstätte, Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna, 2003, p. 93
M. Huey, Viennese Silver, Modern Design 1780-1918, exh. cat., Neue Galerie, New York, 2003, p. 202
C. Witt-Dörring, J. Staggs, Wiener Werkstätte 1903-1932, The Luxury of Beauty, exh. cat., Neue Galerie, New York, 2017, p. 111

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Lot Essay

This model is registered in the Wiener Werkstätte Archive, MAK, Vienna, under inventory numbers WWF-97-9-1 and WWMB-7-M-235.

Two examples of this model soliflower vase are recorded in the Wiener Werkstätte Archive, MAK, Vienna as having been executed.

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