Illustration: Hans Schmithals. Rug design, c1914.
Hans Felix Ernst Schmithals to give him his full name was a German artist and designer who worked from the very early twentieth century onwards. Apart from his fine art work, he produced decorative and design work in a number of disciplines including jewellery and carpet and rug design. This particular article deals with some of his rug work that was published in the German magazine Dekorative Kunst in 1914, although this is not necessarily the date that the rugs were created but the date of publication of the original article. However, it can more or less be assumed that the creation date of these rugs could not have been much before the start of the decade and were certainly produced before the outbreak of the First World War.
Illustration: Hans Schmithals. Rug design, c1914.
Schmithals produced a lively series of rug designs that although fashionably modern in style for the period, also entailed a number of details that harkened back to previous design eras. There is an element of eighteenth century decoration to some of the rug designs, with a particular emphasis on rococo scrollwork. However, much of what we would assume to be typical of the eighteenth century has been reduced to a simplification of intent by Schmithals. This means that although the decorative rug work gives an impression of the sophisticated elegance of the eighteenth century, it bears none of the sometimes overly fussy and complex border and framework that would have tied the designers work into the world of pastiche rather than that of investigative sympathy.
Illustration: Hans Schmithals. Rug design, c1914.
Interestingly some of Schmithals work in this small series of rug designs, moved further away from the conventions of rug decoration, than others. The fourth example featured here, has in particular taken the elements of the more formal pieces and abstracted the decorative interior borders of the central medallion so that it appears more like a composition for a fine art piece than the traditions of rug design. In some respects, this ties in with some of Schmithals more abstract fine art work that at times worked in tandem with his decorative work, one conceivably fuelling the other.
The phenomenon of fine and decorative art influencing the direction and parameters of each other has a rich and varied history, particularly in Europe. France laid special emphasis on the ideas behind fine art being just as persuasive and influential to the decorative arts as the practicalities and necessities of the more focused commercially led decorative arts. In Britain, the situation was very different as fine art was very much a pawn of status and class discrimination. Students of the decorative arts were long forbidden to study fine art as part of their curriculum as the subject was thought to be limited to the pastime of a gentleman, rather than that of the so called artisan class. This short-sightedness led to decades, if not generations of designers and their decorative work that could not use the full panoply of vocabulary as used by the French, where it was considered a prerequisite for a creative of any means, to study fine art in order to excel in design, decoration or craft.
Illustration: Hans Schmithals. Rug design, c1914.
Today most commercially motivated design and decoration courses take it for granted that a student be interested in and have a knowledge of both the history of and the sensibilities of fine art. That it adds dimension to pattern work is an obvious fact. Much of the twentieth century production of commercial textile work for example would have been much the poorer without the influx of new and challenging fine art ideas and theories. The wider spectrum sanctioned by the fine art world has also allowed significant movement from the decorative and craft worlds into that of fine art, so that a craft maker can now be considered eligible for individual gallery exhibition status, rather than that of a group craft space.
Schmithals himself strode the space between both worlds, design and fine art. He taught both fine and applied art and produced both as part of his creative career. He maintained a studio in Munich for the production of both commercial design and fine art. Unfortunately, the studio was destroyed in the Second World War, as was some of his fine art work. His creative integrity stretched from the designing of relatively large and seemingly impersonal public interiors of motorway service stations to the very heightened aspect of personal abstract fine art work.
Illustration: Hans Schmithals. Rug design, c1914.
The fine artist working as a designer and the designer working as a fine artist is a fascinating perceived dichotomy that in fact never did truly exist. A creative person is a creative person, capable of understanding complex fine art issues, as well as the maintenance of commercially led work. The multi-faceted expansive world of the artist-designer seems much more prevalent in our own contemporary world than it ever has been before. However, the seemingly mutually exclusive worlds of fine art and design have had a complex and tangled history, much of it profitably creative to both sides. In many respects, the two disciplines are part of the same creative force and should perhaps be acknowledged more often as such.
Further reading links:
Design and Art (Whitechapel: Documents of Contemporary Art)
Foundations of Art and Design
Design As Art (Penguin Modern Classics)
Art Fundamentals: Theory and Practice
Illustrated Elements of Art and Principles of Design
Art Direction and Editorial Design (Abrams Studio)
Twentieth-Century Design (Oxford History of Art)
An Illustrated Life: Drawing Inspiration from the Private Sketchbooks of Artists, Illustrators and Designers
Drawn In: A Peek into the Inspiring Sketchbooks of 44 Fine Artists, Illustrators, Graphic Designers, and Cartoonists
Basic Visual Concepts And Principles For Artists, Architects And Designers
Writing for Visual Thinkers: A Guide for Artists and Designers (2nd Edition) (Voices That Matter)
How Artists See: Artists: Painter, Actor, Dancer, Musician
