Posts Tagged ‘german art’

GERMANY TOOK LONGER to embrace
the changes in decorative arts seen elsewhere in Europe. This was largely because it was still preoccupied with the prevailing Historismus style,
where design was centred on an interpretation of historic elements.
However, through the influence of the Belgian designer Henry van de Velde – who worked on a number of high-profile projects in Germany –and the innovative work of gifted German artists such as Richard Riemerschmid, Peter Behrens, and Franz von Stuck, the Art Nouveau style became popular. This style was known in Germany as Jugendstil
(Youth Style) – a name associated with the popular review Die Jugend (Youth) – and it subsequently flourished throughout Germany during the last decades of the 19th century.
Jugendstil embraced both Symbolism and a preoccupation with nature and natural shapes. It was applied to everything from architecture to furniture and simple household objects. Each element had to work as part of a whole in terms of form and design: a concept called Gesamtkunstwerk. The aim was to make the home a unified, total work of art: practical, simple, dignified, and beautiful.
Many of the exponents of Jugendstil
were painters who turned to the decorative arts as part of a reaction against the stifling historicism of the fine arts. Munich was home to some of these designers, and came to be the city at the heart of the movement.
INNOVATIVE DESIGNERS
Early advocates of Jugendstil included Hermann Obrist, who was inspired by the Symbolists’ emotions and the plant world, and architect August Endell, who played a pivotal role throughout the development of Munich’s Secessionist movement
by seeking to echo the
spirit of his Austrian
contemporaries. Endell designed boldly proportioned, clean-lined furniture in materials such as elm or forged steel, and paid considerable attention to decorative detail.
Among the furniture designers in the Munich group were Richard Riemerschmid, Bruno Paul, and the architect, Peter Behrens.
Behrens was also one of the founding members of the Vereinigte Werkstatten fur Kunst im Handwerk (United Workshops for Applied Art). His furniture combined traditional
rectilinear shapes with restrained
curves. Richard Riemerschmid,
a talented designer, painter, and architect, was also linked to the workshops. His furniture followed Behrens’ example but was also influenced by Celtic origins, which played a role in Germanys decorative traditions. His simply shaped furniture used wood in its natural state and colour, with the grain its most distinctive decorative feature. Bruno Paul, another protagonist of Jugendstil, developed comfortable, rectilinear designs called Typenmobel which he was able to mass produce. They were a forerunner of the industrial furniture production of Ithe I Q Ws and 40s.
Germany also spawned a host of artists’ guilds, established in an effort to realise the ideals of the British Arts and Crafts movement.
THE DARMSTADT COLONY
The most notable of these guilds was founded in 1899 by Ernst Ludwig, Grand Duke of Hesse, and was based at Darmstadt. Largely the vision of the Austrian architect and designer, Josef Maria Olbrich, the Darmstadt colony included public buildings and residences that were designed, built, and furnished by various artists.
art” could be found at Darmstadt in the house that Peter Behrens designed for himself. The interior, furniture, and decoration created a unified whole.
By the beginning of the 20th century, Germany had embraced industrial production and increasingly turned its attention to improving the quality of mass-produced, industrial products. This signalled the death knoll for Art Nouveau, with its ideals of hand-craftsmanship, freedom of artistic creation, and refined decoration.

CIRCULAR DINING TABLE
This oak pedestal dining table was designed by Peter Behrens and made by the Vereingte Werkstatten far Kunst im Handwerk, Munich. It has a panelled top above an urn-shaped pedestal. The six C-scroll supports underneath the table repeat the symmetry of the six-panel circular top. The circular foot plate also
repeats the shape of the circular table top. With Richard Riemerschmid, Behrens was the first industrial designer, designing specifically for mass production. With this piece, Behrens moved away from his earlier elaborate and curvilinear Art Nouveau style towards a simpler style that depended on the quality of the wood, and simple shapes and proportions. c.1900.
SIDE CHAIR
This chair by Peter Behrens was designed for the poet Richard Dehmel’s house in Hamburg. Made of white painted wood, the chair is geometric in design, with bold cut-out shapes on the back and has straight legs.
YELLOW LACQUERED CUPBOARD
This pinewood cupboard was designed by Gertrud Kleinhempel and made by Dresdner Werlkstatten. Two of its four doors are pierced with heart motifs, and it is divided horizontally with three rows of rectangular, black and white scenic panels.
c.1900.

This stained pine commode, designed by Richard Riemerschmid, has a rectangular top with a three-sided splashback. The six drawers have nickel-plated pulls. c.1905.
This Patriz Huber cupboard is polished and partly carved. It has inlays of different exotic woods and copper mountings. The top has facetted glazing and shelves on either side. c.1900.
This mahogany table, designed by Richard Riemerschmid and made by Dresdner Werlkstatten, has a hexagonal top, a round second tier, and curved legs. 1905.
This oak chair by Otto Eckmann has square-section arms, rails, legs, supports, and stretchers, with the latter two bowed. It has a brass-riveted, leather-upholstered back and seat pads. c.1900.
SIX-DRAWER COMMODE
LEMON MAHOGANY CUPBOARD
COUCH TABLE
OAK FRAME ARMCHAIR
DINING CHAIR
This is a poplar dining chair which comes from a set of nine, designed by Peter Behrens. It is lacquered and has a
leather seat. c.1901.
BEECH FRAME ARMCHAIR
This beech chair was designed by Marcel Kammerer and made by Thonet of Vienna (see p.375). The bentwood frame is stained mahogany, and the stuffed seat and buttoned back are covered in brown leather. c.1910.

Art Deco European Furniture: ITALIAN CABINET, WALNUT EASY CHAIR, ITALIAN BUFFET, SWEDISH CHAIR, BELGIAN DESK, ITALIAN COFFEE TABLE

TREMENDOUS UPHEAVALS came about
in Europe in the wake of World War 1. The need for change was keenly felt by architects and designers from Italy to Belgium and the Netherlands, and from Germany to Scandinavia.
At the heart of this longing for change lay a functionalist ideology and a desire for art to accommodate the exciting technological advances of the early 20th century Mass-produced, functional furniture designs became the order of the day, a philosophy that was realized by Alvar Aalto in Finland and with the formation in 1919 of the Bauhaus by Walter Gropius. Internationally acclaimed, the Bauhaus sought to
bring together the talents of creative artists, designers, and craftsmen, to create prototype designs suitable for industrial mass production (see p.426).
Although the Modernist Bauhaus style prevailed in Germany during the 1920s and 1930s, there were also architects and designers working in a more decorative manner. Using vibrant colours, and drawing on the Rococo and Biedermeier styles for inspiration, German Art Deco furniture exhibited Oriental touches in its use of lacquer, together with Cubist detailing. Bruno Paul’s “Room for a Gentleman”, shown at Macy’s department store in New York in 1928, was typical of the
restrained form of Art Deco that was pursued by these German designers. The room contained lacquered furniture with inlay work, and a rug with a geometric design. Many German and Austrian – mainly Jewish – designers emigrated to America in the late 1.920s and early I 930s, and joined Paul Frankl (see p.397) in developing the Art Deco style there.
NORTHERN EUROPEAN TRENDS It was in the Netherlands that the concept of abstraction was first applied to furniture design. At the helm of this revolutionary artistic idea was the avant-garde De Stijl group, formed
in 1917 by the painters Theo van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian. The functionalist furniture designed by the group was conspicuously absent from the 1925 Paris Exhibition. The Dutch pavilion there was designed by J.E Staal, a member of the Amsterdam School, which favoured the use of theatrical, expressionist, and Oriental motifs in furniture designs. Among the exhibits was furniture by C.A. Lion Cachet, designed for a Dutch ocean liner. He used dark tropical woods inlaid with ivory and lighter woods in traditional-shaped pieces with Oriental decoration and parchment panels. Jaap Gidding’s cinema and theatre interiors also followed the French Art Deco style. The Tuschinski cinema in Amsterdam (1918-21) was typical, with its decorative, opulent interior, and special light effects.
In Scandinavia, Art Deco took a more classical turn with an emphasis on elegance, proportion, luxurious materials, and hand-crafting. In 1930, British writer, Morton Shand, defined the Swedish restrained Neoclassical style prevalent at the 1925 Paris
Exhibition as a “line characterized by its slender and almost elfin grace”. Exhibiting a similar style, Otto Meyer’s and Jacob Petersen’s graceful, curving chairs crafted out A sycamore and
mahogany were superbly set off by the batik wall-covering of Ebbe Sadolin in the Danish pavilion.
ITALIAN BALANCE
Italian furniture designers struggled to find a balance between the demand for classical elegance and the language of the sophisticated modern style.
Although ill at case with the display of sumptuous luxury that was the hallmark of French Art Deco, Italian cabinets, tables, writing desks, and chairs made full use of the beauty of lustrous local and exotic timbers. Many of them were embellished with bronze mounts, or lightly carved or
inlaid patterns of flower baskets, garlands, or geometric motifs that were typical of Art Deco.
The Italian version of Art Deco reached its fullest expression in the hands of the innovative architect Gio Ponti. He successfully managed to combine the functional, geometric, spare structure promoted by the Wiener Werkstatte designers with the sophisticated and elegant refinements of the French Art Deco style.

ITALIAN COFFEE TABLE
This fine Italian coffee table has a rectangular glass-topped surface on tapering plank legs. It has been crafted from bird’s-eye maple and ebony veneer. Exotic wood veneers, such as the ebony used in this piece, were commonly used
in European Art Deco furniture. The dark ebony highlights the simple geometric structure of the coffee table.
This Swiss walnut desk has a rectangular top with rounded corners. The central drawer and two flanking cabinets have decorative “English-style” handles, and the whole piece is raised
on square feet. The grain of the walnut has been highlighted, providing additional visual interest. c.1925.
BELGIAN DESK
Designed by De Coene Freres, this Belgian desk has four drawers, tapering legs, and nickel feet, and is covered in black lacquer. The sleek black design demonstrates a relinquishing of unnecessary decoration in favour of pure functionality. c. 1930.
SWEDISH CHAIR
This Swedish Art Deco chair is upholstered in brown leather and supported upon tapering legs, with two slightly splayed rear legs, and curvilinear arm rests. The backrest has a
central panel with burr wood and satinwood details. c.1920.
This bridge chair is one of a pair designed by De Coene Freres. The curved armrests form a continuous “U” shape with the bowed seat frame. The chair is upholstered in a red, checked fabric and has tapering front legs.

The rectilinear structure of the buffet is emphasized by the austere placement
of the doors and drawers.
The ivory inlay used for the drawer pulls is a typical Art Deco detail.
ITALIAN BUFFET
The shelf structure of this Italian buffet is characteristic of Art Deco design, combining clean lines and asymmetry with a luxurious and decorative burr wood finish. The shelf structure contains a mirror on a case with four small drawers and a twin
cabinet door enclosing an adjustable shelf. Subtle, inlaid handles are attached to the four drawers and the cabinet doors. The geometric shape is typical of Italian Art Deco, which took its lead from the Wiener Werlkstatte. The use of exotic timber is more typical of the French style.
The burr wood veneer
makes a boldly
luxurious statement
ITALIAN CABINET
This rectangular Ulrich Guglielmo cabinet has two doors and is supported on a square plinth lined with goat parchment. The doors have ivory mounts and the plinth is veneered with kingwood. Round ebony knobs, with gilded bronze mountings and keys, are attached to the 14 interior drawers. c.1930.
WALNUT EASY CHAIR
This continental walnut easy chair is upholstered in cream, a popular colour in Art Deco furniture design. The chair has broad, curving armrests, each supported on three vertical fluted rods, and moulded sledge-like block feet.