the Wiener Werkstätte (designer(s) unknown)
Box
circa 1910
(cardboard, printed paper and brass handles)
Here sit four neatly-stacked drawers once used to hold sugared almonds and chocolates (consider Confiserie Altmann & Kühne), needles and buttons or even calling cards. As with the Wiener Werkstätte style, this box is consumed in a continuous, nearly uninterrupted wave of simplified and geometric pattern. Its limited colour suggests the earlier stages of this Austrian arts and crafts movement, while its actual pattern foreshadows the softening of squares and similarly-pointed shapes seen later in the movement’s teenage years.
This box was and is a statement piece. In its time it was not so much one in the respect of money, but in that of style and quality. Today, however, an artefact as this reaches not only a great sentimental sum (to the attentive and well-trained eye) but an equally-high price. It is possible to find treasures as this still lurking unnoticed in common market places, especially pieces which are as subtle as tattered paper boxes with barely-noticeable printed designs being used to file postcards or stamps or mouldy bracelets. But considering how short-lived the movement was, despite its incredible output of all things from ceramic cups and portraits to silver-laced vases, patterned upholstery and wallpapers, these pieces are nevertheless rare but exceptional finds. As with this layered box, each and every one has an unquestionable sense of character.
