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The Wiener Werkstatte - The Viennese Workshop Society of Craftsmen.
At the end of the nineteenth century, Vienna was well on its way to becoming a thoroughly modern city.
The inexorable march towards a new century was leaving behind the old Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Leaving aside the nostalgic, tradition-loving image of Strauss’s Waltz, strudel, smoke-filled cafes and comic operettas.
Vienna produced some leading minds such as Freud who was delving into man's unconscious,
Schonberg who was experimenting with atonal music, and Mach who probed relative time and space before
Einstein formulated his famous equation.
As a symbol of the progress being made, the municipal government had decided to construct a boulevard
lined with public architecture to be built over the site of the city's ancient walled fortifications. Yet these
stunning monuments - the city hall, the university, and the imperial palace among them - shared more with
the past than the ground on which they were built as the prevailing cultural attitude at the time called for a
revival of former styles. Thus the university was built in Renaissance style to honour that great period of learning.
One group of artists was particularly outraged by the introduction, into contemporary life,
something that they considered to be outmoded and very ugly. These people did not want to update the past but
rather to abandon it completely. Looking at their own age for guidelines to innovation rather than imitating the past,
they demanded a naissance in the arts rather than a renaissance. They belonged to the Wiener Werkstatte -
the Viennese Workshop Society of Craftsmen.
In an era that was just embracing the benefits of the Industrial Age, the Werkstatte were determined to
mold the look of the current culture literally with its hands, with high quality design and handcraftsmanship.
The famous enterprise, sometimes also named incorrectly, Wiener or Weiner Werkstatte, Wiener Werkstaetten,
evolved from theVienna Secession. The Vienna Secession grew out of a dissatisfaction with the traditional practices
of the Kunstlerhausgenossenschaft; an association which could have been called the Vienna Academie.
The Kunstlerhaus was, in Gustav Klimpt’s's eyes, directed by commercial motives that were limiting in their
disregard of foreign artists and maintained art as something separate from the lives of the majority of the Austrian people.
This conflict between new ideals and the establishment came to a head in 1897 when forty members of the Kunstlerhaus
seceded and founded their own association with Gustav Klimt as their president as a progressive alliance of artists and designers.
From the start, the Secession had placed special emphasis on the applied arts, and its 1900 exhibition surveying the work
of contemporary European design workshops prompted the young architect Josef Hoffman and his artist friend
Kolman Moser to consider establishing a similar enterprise in Austria. Finally in 1903, with backing from the
industrialist Fritz Wärndorfer, the Wiener Werkstätte saw the light of day. From three small rooms, it soon expanded to
fill a three-story building with separate, specially designed facilities for metalwork, leatherwork, bookbinding,
woodworking and a paint shop.
The undertaking "WIENER WERKSTAETTE" had a clear aim: to make all facets of human life into one unified work
of art. This began with the creation of - for that time extraordinarily - advanced working conditions for the craftsmen,
and it ended with the wish to create everything entirely anew, whether or not it was needed for everyday use or
should act as decoration. It was also decided only to approve objects of outstanding individuality and beauty,
and great value was put on the exclusive and exquisite craftsmanship.
This followed the organisation's motto: "Better to work 10 days on one product than to manufacture 10 products in one day."
The seat of the venture was in the Neustiftgasse 32-34, where a new building was adapted to their
requirements. It would eventually exhaust Wärndorfers complete fortune, in the meantime, however,
the enthusiasm with which the keyfigures threw themselves into work was great. Through exhibitions
and fairs and along with the encouragement of a well-wishing press the Wiener Werkstatte quickly
gained an exellent and widespread reputation. The duoHoffmann and Moser complemented each
other so well, that for a time it was impossible to differ between their design.
The circle of customers of consisted of artists and the open-minded, progressive and financially
well-to-do jewish upper middle class of the monarchy.
Most of the objects produced in the Wiener Werkstatte were stamped with a number of different
hallmarks, with the trademark of the Wiener Werkstatte, the monogram of the designer and that of
the craftsman, who completed it. The Wiener Werkstatte had about 100 employees in 1905, of whom 37
were masters of their trade.
Branches were opened in Karlsbad 1909, Marienbad, Zürich 1916/17, New York 1922, and Berlin 1929.
In 1907, the Wiener Werkstätte took over distribution for the Wiener Keramik, a ceramics workshop of kindred
spirit headed by Michael Powolny and Bertold Loffler.
The Wiener Werkstätte's first years were heady times, during which the collaboration between Hoffmann and
Moser reached its peak. The two artists created a geometric style whose functional simplicity anticipates later
modernism and has influenced the work of many of today's leading designers and architects.
In 1907, Moser, embittered by the financial squabbling, left the Wiener Werkstätte, which subsequently entered
a new phase, both stylistically and economically.
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