Josef Hoffmann

Rare cassette by Josef Hoffmann Silver, gilded inside, moss agate. A rectangular body with a flat hinged lid on four oval disk feet. The front, lid and back of the casket with finely cut, translucent moss agate in narrow frames with embossed graphic friezes of squares and oblong rectangles. The side walls with flat embossed stylized palmette decoration and sparse scrollwork. Marks: Viennese Diana head mark for fineness 900, 1866 - 1922, rose mark and signet WW of the Wiener Werkstätte, MZ Josef Hoffmann, monogram AW of the executing goldsmith Adolf Wertnik, additionally stamped "WIENER WERKSTÄTTE". Dutch import mark from 1906. H 12; width 16.9; depth 11.2 cm, weight 970 g. Vienna, Wiener Werkstätte, designed by Josef Hoffmann, around 1910. Together with Kolomann Moser and the banker Fritz Wärndörfer, Josef Hoffmann founded the Wiener Werkstätte in 1903 as a production community of visual artists modeled on the Arts and Crafts Movement in England. Like-minded artists such as Dagobert Peche and Otto Prutscher, as well as Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, joined the movement. Together, they were committed to a renewal of art through a return to craftsmanship, whereby all areas of human life were seen as a creative unit. In close collaboration with the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts and the Vienna Secession, holistic designs for buildings, furniture, textiles, goldsmithery and ceramics were created, which left behind the rich floral ornamentation of early Art Nouveau in favor of geometric-abstract forms and are already regarded today as harbingers of Art Deco. The famous Palais Stoclet in Brussels with its wall friezes by Gustav Klimt (1905 - 1911) or the Villa Ast in Vienna (1909 - 1911) are examples of such complete works of art, whose fascination remains unbroken to this day. An identically executed cassette by Josef Hoffmann can be found in the collection of the Museum of Applied Arts, MAK, in Vienna (Inv. No. WWF 94-110-4) and bears the model number S1790 for the year 1910. The original design drawing has also been preserved in the MAK. Provenance Kunsthandel John Endlich, Haarlem, 2015; important Belgian collection. Literature On Josef Hoffmann and the Wiener Werkstätte, see Werner Schweiger, Meisterwerke der Wiener Werkstätte, Vienna 1990, p. 43 ff., with numerous illustrations. Cf. also cat. Wiener Silber, Modernes Design 1780-1918, Ostfildern-Ruit 2003, p. 176 ff. On the works for the Palais Stoclet and the Villa Ast, see Gabriele Fahr-Becker, Wiener Werkstätte 1903 - 1932, Cologne 2022, p. 42 ff. For Adolf Wertnik's master mark, see ibid. p. 221.