Illustration: Max Lauger. Wallpaper design, c1898.
Max Lauger is probably much better known for his work in ceramics with a career that stretched from the 1890s to the 1940s. However, his ceramic career was a self-taught one as he studied both fine art painting and interior design at art school. It is interesting to note that Lauger had started to experiment with ceramics as early as the 1880s, and therefore any work he produced in other mediums and disciplines might well have been affected by what turned out to be a nearly lifelong creative journey in ceramics.
The three illustrations shown in this article are wallpaper designs that Lauger produced in about 1898, the same year that he became a professor at what is today Karlsruhe University, but at the time was known as an Institute of Technology. Lauger had also set up his first independent ceramic studio in 1895 so these design pieces are quite important examples of surface pattern work produced by not only a practising ceramicist but also that of an individual who taught at a practical level, aspects of art, design and decoration.
These three wallpaper examples are refreshingly open and unstructured for the period. They bare little resemblance to any of the standard forms of French or German Art Nouveau, and although having a passing similarity to at least some aspects of an Arts & Crafts sensibility, they are in fact much closer to a form of Modernist approach to pattern work whereby most of the compositional work is flat and although representational, the wallpaper designs are more interested in the colour and flow of the design, observational accuracy being secondary.
Illustration: Max Lauger. Wallpaper design, c1898.
Being a ceramicist by nature Lauger has tailored these decorative examples to reflect his interests and discoveries in the world of ceramics. Anyone who has observed the surface pattern work produced by a ceramicist will at once notice how clear, clean and precise the compositions are. Much of the pattern work is lacking in over-detailing and most compositions are outlined in order to segregate or at least highlight them from their backgrounds. Colour is also important and this is another tool that is used to accentuate elements of the pattern, giving it instant appeal and a definite identity. It is a shame that these examples are not in colour as it would have been interesting to note how Lauger used colour representation. However, they are still fine examples of surface pattern work and can be seen as being a breath of creative fresh air in a period where the sometimes over stylization of the Art Nouveau movement could easily become over played and predictable.
Ceramicists can often produce some of the best surface pattern work and have successfully combined careers in ceramics, textiles and wallpaper, particularly from the 1950s onwards. The lack of textures and mark-making in this style of design assure that the pattern work is clear, concise and practical. This has much to do with the nature of ceramics itself which is often concerned more with the over-layering of slips, rather than the indenting of texture and mark-making. However, this is not universal and there are of course ceramicists that do use texture and mark-making to great effect.
Lauger may well not have produced much remembered work outside of his chosen discipline. However, these examples give some indication as to how the structure and makeup of a particular discipline can fundamentally challenge the conception of that discipline. By sometimes restructuring the guidelines, a relative outsider to a particular speciality can achieve a result that while not challenging the discipline itself, does lend itself to opening up the range of possibilities that can be achieved.
Illustration: Max Lager. Wallpaper design, c1898.
These three wallpaper patterns are particularly interesting examples, the more so for being produced within the middle of the Europe-wide decorative Art Nouveau movement. They clearly reflect the creative parameters of the ceramicist Lauger, rather than the expected and usual ones of the wallpaper industry and the expected creative parameters of the discipline. It would be even more interesting to have seen how Lauger reacted in more decorative mediums and whether his ceramicist background reflected just as strongly in those disciplines as it did in that of wallpaper.
Further reading links:
Art Nouveau Tiles + CD Rom
Jakob Julius Scharvogel: Keramiker des Jugendstils
Art Nouveau and Applied Art [Galerie Wolfgang Ketterer , Munchen (117) / 15 May 1987]
Jugendstil =: Art Nouveau (German Edition)
Hungarian Ceramics from the Zsolnay Manufactory, 1853-2001
English Decorative Ceramics: Art Nouveau to Art Deco (1880-1940)
Art Nouveau Glass and Ceramics (Pocket Companion Guides - Centuries of Style)
Art Nouveau Tiles: C. 1890-1914 (Schiffer Book for Collectors)
Art Nouveau, Decorative Arts and Studio Ceramics
Art Nouveau Tiles (Shire Library)
Wall Papers for Historic Buildings: A Guide to Selecting Reproduction Wallpapers
Wallpaper: A History of Style and Trends
Wallpaper (Historic Houses Trust Collection)
Wallpaper, its history, design and use,
Fabrics and Wallpapers: Design Source Book
Pattern Design: Period Design Source Book
Twentieth-Century Pattern Design
Wallpaper and the Artist: From Durer to Warhol
