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Full text: Wiener Werkstätte : Avantgarde, Art Déco, Industrial Design

sheets) for a considerable number of the articles produced in its own ateliers, and many 
items were also finished by subcontractors (e.g., galvanising of metal objects). 
If industrial design is defined as the artistic design of articles for daily use, the cutlery of 
the Wiener Werkstätte and several painted white latticework articles fall into this catego- 
ry. Both were produced in the Wiener Werkstätte and by subcontractors. As early as 1907 
the Viennese Bachmann Company took over production of the “round model” cutlery and 
records Show that from 1910 onwards the square perforated latticework articles that are 
now so familiär were manufactured by the Viennese firm of Cloeter. 
The number of firms employed by the Wiener Werkstätte in one way or another was large. 
The Wiener Werkstätte therefore had a significant influence on large sectors of the entire 
art industry of the time. There was scarcely a branch of the industry that was not commis- 
sioned by the Wiener Werkstätte to carry out certain manufacturing processes, and which 
was thus at least partly dependent on it. The Wiener Werkstätte’s chief glass agent was 
Lobmeyr, and the glass factories which worked for them included Meyr’s Neffe/Adolf, Mo 
ser/Karlsbad, Oertel/Haida, Schappel/Haida, Loetz’ Witwe/Klostermühle, and subsequent- 
ly also Tiroler Glashütte. 
Porcelain Services, for example the “Merkur” and “Calais” models by Hoffmann, were ge- 
nerally produced by Pfeiffer & Löwenstein in Schlackenwerth, but sometimes decorated 
in Vienna by Böck. Mechanical methods of reproduction were normally used (transfers 
and stamps for edges and individual motifs). Bachmann and Cloeter have already been 
mentioned as metal workers, and the Viennese firms of J. Gasterstaedt, Franz Kaiser and 
J. G. Petzold & Sohn were also employed for metal work in the late twenties. Enamelling 
may often have been carried out by the Kunstgewerbeschule (cat. no. 37), and in some 
cases by the art industry (Souval, cat. no. 73). There is scarcely any documentation on 
the furniture of the Wiener Werkstätte, and it is therefore difficult to attribute its produc 
tion to any specific Company. The furniture production of the Wiener Werkstätte itself was 
apparently limited to the years prior to 1910, with the exception of the works produced 
by the “Künstlerwerkstätte" (artists’ ateiier) of the Wiener Werkstätte. 
Records show that the Viennese printers of Berger, Rosenbaum, Siegert, Brüder Kohn, 
the Gesellschaft für Graphische Industrie and others printed postcards for the Wiener 
Werkstätte. 
Numerous textile printing works reproduced the designs created by the Wiener Werkstät 
te, and the firms of Max Schmidt and Tekko & Salubra had wallpapers by the Wiener Werk 
stätte in their ränge. 
There is also evidence of links with factories outside Austria: Vereinigte 
Smyrna = Teppich = Fabriken AG of Cottbus produced runners for the Wiener Werkstätte, 
and lacework was executed in Switzerland through the mediation of the Zürich branch 
(cat. no. 130). 
The Companies mentioned here as working for the Wiener Werkstätte naturally only repre- 
sent a selection. 
THE QUESTION OF STYLE 
The entire production of the Wiener Werkstätte from 1903 tili 1932 cannot be classified 
using the conventional principles of stylistic periods. Only slightly affected by art nouveau, 
committed to cubism, functionality and expressionism from an early stage, avant-garde 
in many respects, anticipating art deco even before the First World War, the Wiener Werk 
stätte does not present the research worker with a picture of stylistic unity or with an im- 
pression of unrelated eclectic individual achievements. It is hard to define the common 
factor, but there definitely is one in view of the many interconnections, the identical tasks 
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