History of modern design

¶ … History of Modern Design: Examples of the Arts and Crafts Movement

Two exemplars of the arts and crafts movement, the Wiener Werkstatte and the Deutscher Werkbund, are noted as important stylistic and artistic precursors to Bauhaus. Josef Hoffman and Kolo Moser founded the "Wiener Werkstatte Produktiv-Gemeinschaft von Kunsthandwerken, Wien" (the Viennese Workshop and Production Cooperative of Art Works in Vienna) in 1903. The Vienna Workshop was a direct offshoot from the fin de-siecle Vienna Secession. The Vienna Secession consisted of a group of artists that organized themselves as an alternative to the conservatism of the art establishment in late 19th century Vienna. The Vienna Secession placed a strong emphasis on metalwork, leatherwork, bookbinding, woodworking and a paint shop that carried over into the Weiner Werkstatte and eventually created its exclusive emphasis on reproductive-style crafts-based work, rather than on unique painting and drawing.

Together, Hoffman and Moser modeled their concept as a kind of guild of handicraft artists, dedicated to making all of the arts and crafts, and indeed, all of life, a kind of unified expression of art. By 1905 the Wiener Werkstatte had over a hundred craftsmen. Its specialty was handmade metal ware products with a sparse, "reductive" style that "belied its dependence on hand production. A change in style around 1915 shifted to what is described as "proto-art deco," or a harbinger of the popular 1920's style of distorted and simplified images of the human figure and repetitive designs. ("Introduction to Wiener Werkstatte," 2004)

The Deutscher Werkbund (German Work Federation) was founded around the same time, 1907 in Munich by Hermann Muthesius. Muthesius was inspired by English the English Arts and Crafts movement. Muthesius was interested in industrial developments in England that enabled mass manufacturing to be profitable. Practicality, more than art was the ideological stress of the Deutscher Werkbund, in contrast to the more artistically-focused Wiener Werkstatte. The Deutscher Werkbund's motto was Vom Sofakissen zum Stadtebau, or that its work spanned from sofa cushions to city building, rather than the philosophy that art was present in all thinks along the Wiener Werkstatte's emphasis. Deutscher Werkbund's commercial and industrial range of interest, however, resulted in a similarly stylized approach to the production of art, although its aim was different. (Schwartz, 1996)

Deutscher Werkbund, rather than to create innovative art stressed the effort integrate traditional crafts and industrial mass-production techniques on a hands-on level. While it shared the 'crafts-based,' reproductive style with the Wiener Werkstatte as well, the fact that Weiner Werkstatte had more individual craftspeople meant that the works often had more idiosyncrasies in their design, particularly in terms of less abstract figures. However, Weiner Werkstatte was an independent effort of progressive artists and designers, and the Deutscher Werkbund was a state-created effort designed to improve the artistic and manufacturing areas of Germany economically as well as artistically, thus this is to be expected. (Schwartz, 1996)