the Wiener Werkstätte: in an Eggshell

the Wiener Werkstätte (designer(s) unknown)

Leather Bonbon Eggbox

circa 1917 (?)

    An understatement in many respects, it is fortunate for us that no one has yet discarded this wonderful piece of leather work simply for its seemingly minimal or boring design, or for an ignorant understanding of its ‘limited usage’. This is an egg remarkably well kept, with its silky pillowed interior in mint condition (void of any irksome stains) and its gilded handiwork showcasing little chipping or fading. Considering that this has survived for nearly a century since its creation as well as that it is made up of such easily degradable and delicate materials, it is a wonder that this precious facet of the short-lived Wiener Werkstätte is only being sold for a mere 65 Euros. It is likely, however, that in its heyday the egg would have been no more expensive than its price today, as the Austrian Arts and Crafts movement who made it was one who passionately promoted hand-made works of art for the everyday home - therefore affordable, tasteful and useful, and brilliantly executed to boot. The movement’s imminent downfall, though, proved that such ideals were not yet fully appreciated by its targeted clientèle, let alone the more international market, and soon its avant-garde endeavours were overruled by the more eye-catching, sought-after and ostentatious name-branded works of art which were to blossom before the coming Second World War. 

     From a positive angle, it is arguably best that the movement experienced an abrupt end to its small window of expression because this motived its members to experiment and create to the fullest. Its end was felt far before its arrival, either through funding matters or the short supplies of materials and workers in relation to the demands and commissions of those who did value its work. As a result, each of the Wiener Werkstätte products were made with the utmost care and attention despite the risk of never being sold or even publicly seen. Once deemed too crafty or unworthy of true artistic merit, works like this leather egg now resurface to a continually maturing society, one riddled with pattern lovers and decorative art vintage collectors who are able to read more clearly the message engrained in such objects - that art, despite age, era or type, can be anything and everything so long as its expression is valued.

Langenthal Porcelain (Swiss)

Langenthal Porcelain (Swiss)

Circular Boîte with gilded and hand-painted exotic birds and flowers (no. 48)

circa 1940-60 (?)

     Grimy, spattered with a big blob of what looked like blueberry juice and carelessly placed between piles of plastic toys spread across an old bed sheet, this little box required only three francs to be freed from its pitiful surroundings. It was very warm from having been under the sun for hours, and it seemed all the more brittle as its lid rattled against its body while, for only a short time, I cradled it around in its crumpled fragment of newspaper. For the remainder of the day, and of course for the rest of my life, I was accompanied by a familiar feeling (and a relentless grin) of greedy satisfaction: one that follows along the lines of, ‘Excellent! At such a pathetic price I have snatched up a fortune of undervalued design and of unique, timeless taste - and it is mine, mine, mine forever! No one else may have it!’ To anyone other than the accustomed market dweller whose eyes constantly peruse even the darkest, dirtiest of corners for potential lost treasures, my thoughts undoubtedly seem irrational and a bit immature. 

     Let it be argued, however, that it is quite the contrary: that thoughts as mine are equal in ecstatic depth and child-like happiness to those of someone who, for example, savours over and over again the dry smell of uncooked rice; or who loves running their fingers through a dog’s wet, soppy fur; or who hikes as fast and as hard as possible until their leg muscles tingle and burn hottest; or who slowly slides their palms across piano keys or the bark of a tree, back and forth, back and forth, until the skin is nearly numb; or who chews through a piece of olive bread with a steady, stealthy clamp of the jaw so as to taste each little grain of yeast, each bubble of air and each fleshy bit of olive skin as best as they can, almost to know that bite of bread as closely as a friend or a lover. Only those who are selfishly narrow-minded presume foreign feelings as these to be silly and weird, even inhuman, and such people deserve little attention, if at all. Anything that causes even the smallest dosage of guilt, self-disgust, sudden happiness, embarrassment or deep sadness (to name only a few) are moments which give individuals definition. My reaction in finding and taking for my own this porcelain jewel is rather a benign example of a ‘moment’, but it would be crude to assume that it is in any way less impressionable.

Carl Johann Tegelstein

Carl Johann Tegelstein

Circular Table (top view, with details)

circa 1844

(glass, gilt bronze and natural hardstones) 

  The harsh but elegant meandros bordering this table mingles with the central spurt of flowers in such a way that it acts as both the flowers’ instructor and friend, which in some cases may be one in the same. As an instructor, its rigid, repetitive pattern seems to be quite stern and unforgiving as it encircles the youthful, rallying bouquet, almost as if to prevent it from venturing too close to the precipice or from moving at all within its claustrophobic bubble. The meandros speaks a language according to an aesthetic, ‘pretty’ set of rules: it winds along a path that is never-ending and continuous, keeping a steady pace and a resolute, unblinking eye that lives only to shun the temptation of straying off course, however slightly. It bears down on the flowers like a hunter on the hunted: in this case not with malice, but with a drunken sense of confidence in its big size and in its great possession of power that it labels its ‘intelligence’. In a way, this is arrogance; and this is what makes the meandros serve as an unknowing friend to the flowers. Its level of arrogance, its assumed authority over what it blindly considers young and stupid, is so great that it overflows the boundaries of tolerance, and it inevitably bequeaths to the bouquet, its ‘pupil’, the very lesson that will teach it exactly how to avoid becoming such an autocrat itself. For the bouquet it is a lesson learnt early through the pain of subordination, but with a result that it is stronger in resistance to that which tried to imprison it in the first place; that it fights back with such a turbulent and colourful joie de vivre that it ends up balancing a discord - one that, in this case, is the table’s visual harmony.

     So which, in fact, is truly trapped: the bouquet of flowers, so obviously enveloped in a rotating prison of embellished trickery? Or the rotating meandros itself, so dull in its dumb repetition of two-dimensional fact that it manages to encase only itself in a prison of self-importance?

Paul-Camille Guigou

Paul-Camille Guigou

La Lavandière

circa 1860

     The deep folds of her skirt are dense and ruffled, textured like moist chipped chalk. They fall heavily from her waist and over her kneeling legs, giving the impression of a wilting origami rose suspended in mid-air and slowly moulding itself around a smooth object. It crumples silently and gracefully, encasing its prey entirely like a great webbed hand. Its stem is (one could say) the woman’s back: sun-lit, arched and foreshortened, it stretches into the picture plane and shares a similar tint of a light, almost blinding blue as that of the lake beyond the trees. Studied closely, the woman’s chemise also shares with the water traces of triangular shapes, whether these are made by seams or by ripples. With a bit of imagination, one could interpret that from these faint triangles there is a suggestion of a third patch of blue - the ‘final’ point to the three-sided puzzle - hidden in the picture. It is evidently the most important detail of all, at least in terms of the washerwoman, because its invisible presence is felt strongest in comparison to those which are seen plainly. Whether it is implied through the woman’s distinct posture, the washing board on which she kneels, the bar of soap or, as already proposed, through the triangular anomalies in blue, the river reveals itself as clearly as if it were painted in full view: flowing directly beneath the woman’s arms, bubbling serenely from one end to the other. But Guigou kept it in the shadows: he chose to focus the viewer’s attention not on the task a washerwoman must do, but on the washerwoman herself. He transformed with only his brush the scene’s natural sunlight into the woman’s very own spotlight, almost as if to place her centre stage in a play about her type of everyday life. Her task is not to look at it straight in the face, but to embrace it indifferently and without complaint.

the Timepiece: Patek Philippe & Cie

Patek Philippe & Cie

‘Baies Sauvages’ Dress-watch (no. 810’799)

circa 1927

(coral set into chiselled and enamelled gold)

    It is early autumn: a small storm brews over the distant tree tops tracing the edges of a field. Still flushed a deep green, the field’s blades of grass ripple together like ominous waves of a lake, its surface peppered with an occasional stunned rabbit caught tracing its way back to its safe, warm burrow. A grunt of thunder echoes from close by; clusters of pale leaves flutter down from an old birch and pirouette in mid-air; and a drifting magpie, suddenly intent on plucking up a shiny something rolling along the ground below, clumsily swoops down and - ‘Ahh! Sacrebleu!’ - nearly collides with the shiny something’s second pursuer: Hercule Poirot. 

     Stumbling somewhat, and muttering furiously underneath his twitching mustache (something about ‘zat wretched motorcar’ and ‘Hastings’ lack of ze brain cells, grey and all!’), the portly Belgian bends over once more to pick up his runaway button, now stationed against a stubborn pebble. Casting a weary eye up towards the receding bird, Poirot straightens and, slightly more violently than intended, hitches up his askew trousers. He balances himself against his half-umbrella half-walking stick, checking that nothing more has unceremoniously freed itself from his carefully chosen dinner attire (‘Zis wind tries to kill Poirot!’), then sticks his gloved hand into his waistcoat and pulls out a long fine chain, its end adorned with a berry-specked dress-watch identical to this one. With a small click it opens to reveal a handsome face yawning the time of only six minutes to seven, causing Poirot to make an elegant little hop closer in the direction of the manor house beyond the bend. He places the watch back into its silk-lined dwelling and begins to mutter peevishly once more. But this time, his mustache twitches with a smile. One button short and only three minutes lost, 'Poirot has certainly known worse'. 
    Opening his umbrella, he chuckles and quickens his pace, attempting to resume his stylishly-cut pre-magpie strut along the country road. Stones and stray leaves crunch beneath his soles; rain now splatters the ground with a growing rhythm; and time ticks steadily on alongside Poirot’s hearty little hum.