FOREWORD
The exhibition “Glass 1905 - 1925” was held at the Austrian Museum of Applied Art in
Vienna in the year 1985. This resulted in the publication of my first work on this subject,
which was devoted entirely to cut glass. I intended to deal with other techniques
(stained, etched, painted, engraved glass etc.) in a second volume. However, in the
course of my researches I came across such extensive and important material on glass
with bronzite decoration that it seemed logical to produce a separate publication on this
special field.
Thanks to the documentation preserved in the Company archives of J. & L. Lobmeyr,
Vienna, I am now in a position to publish an almost complete record of the bronzite dec-
orations created by Josef Hoffmann, Ludwig Heinrich Jungnickel, Urban Janke, Oswald
Dittrich and Arnold Nechansky. The subject of “black and gold painting” (including the
pen drawings of Karl Massanetz) has also been documented in a similar manner and will
therefore be published as a third volume in the series “Glass 1905 - 1925”. Further vol-
umes dealing with other subjects will follow.
The present publication would not have been possible without access to the Company
archives of J. & L. Lobmeyr. I should therefore like to thank Harry and Peter Rath of the
firm of J. & L, Lobmeyr for their wholehearted support.
Professor Ludwig Neustifter has always taken a close interest in the entire “Glass 1905
- 1925” project, to which he gave his support as head of the Austrian Museum of Ap
plied Art. I should therefore like to take this opportunity of expressing my gratitude to
him, too.
The travelling exhibition “Glass 1905 - 1925” organised by the museum toured the Aus
trian provinces (with stops in Linz, Graz and Salzburg) and attracted the interest of a
wide audience. Towards the end of the 1980’s a representative selection of glassware
from the collections of the Austrian Museum of Applied Art is to be exhibited in Prague
under the terms of a cultural agreement between Austria and Czechoslovakia.
The fact that there has been such a positive echo to my research in this hitherto rather
neglected field - most of the glass involved was in the depositories of the museums in
Vienna and Graz (Joanneum, Provincial Museum of Styria, Department of Applied Art) -
makes me feel obliged to continue my research in this field. This is an Obligation that I
shall have pleasure in fulfilling.
Vienna, August 1987
Waltraud Neuwirth
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