Designed by Friedrich L. Berzeviczy-Pallavicini for Demel, K&K Hofzuckerbäcker (Wien)
Paper Box
circa 1930s (?)
Another understated masterpiece made for Demel. The soft yellow stretching across the six paper panels draws together the illustrations as if they are floating along a similar sun-dyed skyline. They seem to slowly drift and bump into one another, softening or denting their brown contours like delicately-shaped clouds. The ripe flowers, the tentacled shisha and the weightless birds all circle around the cross-legged figure who serves as the all-seeing genie guarding the box’s only entrance and exit. But what could have been inside?
It is likely that the artist planted and played with certain motifs in order to hint as to what edible mystery lay hidden and waiting. The Persian qualities of the figure’s headdress and shoes, for example, and the extravagant style in which the figure sits to smoke, could denote that whatever the box contained was similar to the bitter delicacies found throughout the Near East. These may have been coffee beans dipped in hardened honey, spiced cashews or cacao beans or even some form of tea leaves. The colour yellow, too, suggests Eastern cultures: respected in many senses, it is used sparingly on imperial chinaware of the Far East or used profusely in design schemes for Indian saris and tapestries. It is a colour rich in power and meaning according to the different cultures of the Orient, and its use on this confectionary box may very well be to express that something more exotic than an ordinary (though no less delicious) Austrian treat resided inside - something as exotic as the swooping finely-tailed birds and the great perfumed blossoms. In their simplicity the illustrations elegantly compliment the box’s general purpose, even if it was only a miniature Sachertorte or Sandguglhupf that it once held.
