Illustration: Otto Prutscher. Carpet design, c1909.
This piece of design work can be seen as a prime example of what many have come to associate, and in some respects even expect, from the design movement of the Wiener Werkstatte. It was produced as a carpet design around 1909 by one of the prominent members of the Wiener Werkstatte, Otto Prutscher.
Prutscher had the great fortune to be taught at the Viennese Art School by amongst others, Professor Josef Hoffmann. Hoffmann along with Koloman Moser, were the initial instigators and founders of the Wiener Werkstatte in 1903. It was one of a number of design and decorative initiatives across Europe, that wished to galvanise the decorative arts, along with architecture, craft disciplines and fine art, into one working production team that would focus on new initiatives and broad working practises. It was hoped that these new design and decorative formats, whereby all disciplines were seen as complementary to each other, would produce a new dynamism and a new direction in which to represent themselves in the new twentieth century.
However, as in all newly inspired movements, the Wiener Werkstatte had roots and origins within a number of traditions along with the idealisms and idioms of previous movements. Therefore, influences and inspirations for the Viennese movement came from a number of sources including the influential British Arts & Crafts movement and the multiple cultural traditions of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, whereby every province ruled by Vienna had its own unique cultural and craft industry.
Much of the initial work produced by members of the Wiener Werkstatte, which included furniture, metalwork, glass, ceramics, jewellery and textiles, along with graphics and fine art, was very much in the mould of hand-production with pieces even being seen as unique.
The workshops had a steady clientele of the wealthier sections of Viennese society who were often artistically inspired or at least sympathetic to art. The Werkstatte itself avoided issues that dealt with the appropriateness of marketing products purely for the wealthy. They saw no reason to feel as uncomfortable as William Morris had trying to wrestle with the ideals of his dream and the stark realities and practicalities of the market place. The workshops motto of better to work ten days on one product than to manufacture ten products in one day, makes it clear what the true intention of the organisers and members of the Wiener Werkstatte was. Werkstatte pieces were never truly meant for the masses, even though they may have initially been at least partially inspired by those same masses and their traditions of culture and craft.
This fine example of an original carpet design by Otto Prutscher bears little, if any resemblance to the traditions of carpet design in Europe. This tradition was usually dominated by variations of decorative floral work, often influenced originally by design work from Iran and northern India. The same can be said of much of the Arts & Crafts inspired carpet design work produced and led by Morris. This movement also tended towards floral work as a prerequisite for design.
Hoffmann and Moser encouraged geometrically inspired work that could easily be seen as being in direct opposition to nature inspired decoration. Although by no means unique in this respect, the Werkstatte output is often associated with this form of uncompromising geometrical format. This was to eventually expand into Modernism and so it could be said that Prutscher's carpet design has similarities to work produced a decade or so after 1909 when this particular design would have been seen as contemporary in an acceptably fashionable sense. However, in the first decade of the twentieth century it was used as an uncompromising example of clear and concise design work from an organisation that saw itself as being firmly placed within that new century.
Further reading links:
Otto Prutscher: 1880-1949 (German Edition)
Wiener Werkstatte: 1903-1932 (Special Edition)
Wiener Werkstatte: Design in Vienna 1903-1932
Textiles of the Wiener Werkstatte: 1910-1932
Viennese Design and the Wiener Werkstatte
Wonderful Wiener Werkstatte: Design in Vienna 1903-1932
Important 20th Century Decorative Arts Including Wiener Werkstatte - One Hundred Years and Works by Tiffany Studios: New York, Tuesday 9 December 2003 (Auction VIENNA-1311)
New Worlds: German and Austrian Art, 1890-1940
