By the late nineteenth century, Vienna was well on its way to becoming a thoroughly modern city. The inexorable march of a new century was drowing out the waltz of the old Austro-Hungarian empire. Leaving aside the nostalgic, tradition-loving image of Strauss and strudel, smoke-filled cafes and comic operettas, Vienna produced some fearless minds that leapt into the future. Freud delved into man's unconscious, Schonberg explored atonal music, and Mach probed relative time and space before Einstein formulated his famous equation.
As a symbol of progress, the municipal government had ordered 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. The prevailing cultural attitude called for a revival of former styles. Thus the university was built in Renaissance style to honor that great period of learning.
One group of artists was particularly outraged by the introduction of outmoded excrescences into contemporary life. 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 determined to mold the look of the current culture literally with its hands. Quality handcraftsmanship, they announced, would rescue art and industry from cheap reproductions and thereby calm the anxious soul of machine-age man by filling his home with common objects of uncommon beauty.
Guiding Ideal
The Wiener Werkstatte adopted as its guiding ideal the Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art). In theory this concept called for eliminating arbitrary barriers between art and craft. Fine design would touch even the most utilitarian, humble household object. The home would be completely transformed from a shell filled with heavy, often mismatched elements - the Victorian model of interior decoration - to an integrated unit of interior design coordinated with the structure. One member of the workshop believed that each room should be like an orchestra, with each object an instrument.
In practice, this concept took form not only in architecture, furniture, wallpaper, tableware, cutlery, glassware, metalwork, ceramics, textiles, enamelware, and lacquerware for the home, but also in jewelry, toys, bookbindings, illustrations, postcards, and other paper ephemera, even national postage stamps. No aspect of creating a total work of art was overlooked: The workshop added a fashion department so that the owners of a Wiener Werkstatte house would not spoil the harmony of their surroundings by wearing inharmonious clothing. There was even a specially designed bread roll, prepared by an enlightened bakery, to be served at table in this ideal home.
The Wiener Werkstatte was founded in 1903 by architect Josef Hoffman, artist Kolo Moser, and industrialist Fritz Warndorfer, the latter providing the financial
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