Author Description

The textile department of the Wiener Werkstatte was formally established c.1910, seven years after the inauguration of this many-faceted association of artists and craftsmen. The demand for mostly printed fabrics for use by the fashion department, in interior decoration schemes for well-to-do clients and for sale to the public was met by original designs from around 100 artists, including the association's co-founder Josef Hoffmann and other leading figures such as Dagobert Peche, Carl Otto Czeschka, Maria Likarz and Max Snischek. This proliferation of creativity gave rise to one of the most remarkable legacies of modern textile design. Textiles of the Wiener Werkstatte, 1910-1932 presents selections from the original gouache drawings, pattern books and about 20,000 samples now in the collection of the Austrian Museum for applied Arts, Vienna - a truly remarkable archive of most of the over 1,800 recorded fabric designs. These range from the early rounded naturalistic motifs of Art Nouveau to later angular geometric designs associated with Art Deco, their history and development being fully documented in invaluable archival and documentary records. A wealth of reproductions, many in colour, are supplemented by an exhaustive catalogue and a concordance of artists and pattern names, as well as contemporary photographs of the uses of printed and woven textiles in fashion and interior decoration, both private and public, including exhibition pavilions and the Wiener Werkstatte's own showrooms. The patterns and prints of the Wiener Werkstatte were among the most popular and successful textile designs of the early twentieth century, reflecting both the tastes of Viennese society and general trends towards artistic abstractionism. They are now presented in an unparalleled compilation, drawing on the most comprehensive collection of Wiener Werkstatte designs in existence.