Wakges: Leopold Forstner Textile Design

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Leopold Forstner Textile Design

Illustration: Leopold Forstner. Textile cushion designs, c1908.

Although the Austrian designer and artist Leopold Forstner is perhaps better known today for his wide ranging and popular mosaic work, he was an accomplished designer in a number of fields including both textile and tapestry design, as well as that of illustration and fine art. It was the textile design work that he produced for the Prag-Rudniker company that today's article is concerned with.

Prag-Rudniker was a furniture company that particularly specialised in basket and wicker furniture. This style of furniture had been fashionable for a number of years and continued to sell well throughout the first few years of the twentieth century when these textile designs were produced. The company itself was closely allied to that of the Wiener Werkstatte and had links with a number of the Werkstatte's influential designers.

Illustration: Leopold Forstner. Textile cushion designs, c1908.

Perhaps fittingly for a furniture company, the textile design work that Forstner produced for Prag-Rudniker in this instance took the form of casual furniture cushions. Twelve individual cushion designs have been included as illustrations in this article. All were featured in a 1908 copy of The Studio magazine.

While there is nothing particularly extraordinary or revolutionary about the design work, a number of the examples do hark back in a relatively major way to elements that can be found in the local traditional native styles to be found across Central Europe. The work is both clear and clean with a definite sharp and uncompromisingly geometrical bias, which interestingly, has more than a passing resemblance to illustrative work.

Illustration: Leopold Forstner. Textile cushion designs, c1908.

Perhaps more importantly, Forstner's textile design work shows similarities to work produced by the Wiener Werkstatte. This seems an obvious development due to the fact that he was actually a member of the Werkstatte, but also because of Prag-Rudniker's close relationship with the Werkstatte and also the fact that Forstner was trained in part by Koloman Moser when he was a student in Vienna.

However, it would be unfair to see Forstner as a designer that was little more than a vehicle for the grand scheme of the Wiener Werkstatte. He was after all an artist and designer in his own right and his later independent mosaic work shows his intrinsic individuality. While no one would doubt that he was influenced and to some extent moulded by the Werkstatte, Forstner was also on a personal and creative journey of his own that was both separate and singular.

Illustration: Leopold Forstner. Textile cushion designs, c1908.

While not necessarily dominating the pages of The Studio magazine, the first decade of the twentieth century saw a particularly high percentage of articles dedicated to the design work of both Austria and Germany. Central Europe, in many respects, was considered by a number of contemporary critics to be a hot bed of contemporary innovation and creativity. Forstner, while not producing as large an amount of textile design work as some of his contemporaries in Vienna, was still at the forefront of an obvious Central European departure from the decorative formula of Europe that tended towards the overly ornamental.

Illustration: Leopold Forstner. Textile cushion designs, c1908.

This simple, clear and uncluttered style could be said, in some respects at least, to reflect the future of decorative design work of the later twentieth century. The fact that some of the design work of both Forstner and the Wiener Werkstatte in general derived from local peasant art and decoration, adds an interesting dimension to the style of Modernism and its clear ambition to sever links with the past, perceiving itself as born of the modern, which clearly it was not and could never be.

Every part of our contemporary world is connected in some way, even if tentatively, to that of the past. We are, as individuals, not a wholly modern creation. The same of course applies to our various cultures and decorative arts, all of which have roots in the past. We would be wise to bear this in mind when reflecting and considering the world around us.