Show traces modern silver design to Vienna

NEW YORK, Nov. 12 (UPI) -- An exhibit at the Neue Galerie Museum for German and Austrian art traces the origins of modern silver design to early 19th century Vienna, a century before Scandinavian silver won the reputation as the pioneer of avant-garde design styles.

"Viennese Silver, Modern Design 1780-1918" covers an era beginning with neoclassicism and ending with the Wiener Werkstatte, the design workshop in Vienna credited with transforming the simplicity of the 19th century Biedermeier style into a new tradition of modernism. The show runs through Feb. 16, then re-opens in Vienna at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in October 2004.

Josef Hoffmann was a founder of the Wiener Werkstatt in 1903 and its longtime director. An architect by trade, Hoffmann designed many objects for domestic use, and his silver creations dominate the show of some 180 examples of Austrian silver. He was a contemporary of Danish silversmith Georg Jensen, generally credited with creating the sleek, simple "modern" style of design for tableware and other utilitarian objects.

However, the exhibit at Neue Galerie shows that Hoffmann was building on a tradition that began in Vienna by the late 1700s of reducing silver objects to geometric and rational forms, freed of exuberant and asymmetric Baroque and Rococo adornment so admired by Europe's luxury-loving upper class. This new tradition suited the preferences of the Age of Enlightenment and was influenced by the classic design of objects just beginning to be unearthed at Roman and Greek archaeological sites.

To illustrate the contrast between rococo and neoclassic design, the show opens with Austrian Empress Maria Theresa's gold breakfast service, writhing with ornamentation including fruitwood handles carved in the form of blackamoors, exhibited next to her son Joseph II's silver chocolate pot without a single adornment. To underscore this change in stylistic preferences, there is a photo blowup of Joseph's simple lead coffin at the foot of his parents' magnificent double sarcophagus alive with rococo embellishment.

There are displays of Viennese silver of the early 1800s side by side with silver of the early 1900s that challenge the viewer to decide which is which, and sometimes it is difficult to come up with an answer. But if the object on display seems inspired by an Ionian column capital, as is a cheese tray, or a Roman tripod, as is a small footed bowl, or a Greek drinking cup, as is a confection dish, it is most likely 19th century.

The rage for neoclassic design fitted in well with the Empire style favored by Napoleon, who had close ties to Vienna due to his marriage to a granddaughter of Maria Theresa. One can imagine him enjoying on one of his trips to Vienna the reductive beauty of the silver wine and water jugs, handled baskets for fruit, candy dishes, candelabras, sugar casters, and casseroles that are on display, ornamented only occasionally with a chaste Greek anthemion design.

There is a small gallery devoted to miniature silver objects designed for travelers of the 18th and early 19th century, ranging from folding forks and spoons, salt and pepper shakers, folding mirrors and small candlesticks to a pocket telescope, a folding mirror and elaborate mocha and tea services in beautifully crafted portable chests. But as lovely and fascinating as these objects are, it is the early 20th century silver that dominates viewer attention.

The Wiener Werkstatte turned out unique silver pieces or designs in small editions. Some are of pure silver, others are silver plated copper and brass, and a few are nickel-plated. Many have smooth, gleaming surfaces while others have been textured by hammering and other techniques. The Viennese were particularly fond of silver set with precious and semi-precious stones, and there are examples embellished with opal, amber, amethyst, malachite, agate, coral, turquoise and lapis lazuli.

Hoffman and Koloman Moser, a co-founder of the Werkstatte, turned out whole lines of objects in silver grated in gridlike patterns and in bunched cylinders in their determination to transform silversmithing from a craft into an art. There is a daintiness about much of their output and the diminutive scale of some of the serving dishes is surprising to modern eyes.

Cutlery services are often bolder in size. A 1904 Hoffman-designed service of 11 pieces for each setting includes a corn holder, putting to rest the legend that Europeans did not eat corn on the cob until only recently. The most radically "modern" work was produced at the Werkstatte from 1903 until 1906 when the art nouveau style with its return to forms taken from nature as adornment began to make inroads.

By 1910 Hoffman had designed a silver centerpiece including striated silver columns decorated with wreaths of silver leaves. A towering 1908 silver and glass vitrine, designed for the display of treasured objects by Carl Otto Czechka and executed by the Werkstatte, is embellished with stylized caryatid figures and set with blue enamel, baroque pearls, and ivory.

Some of the pieces on display have interesting cultural associations. There is a coral-encrusted box given to Alma Mahler by her compose husband, Gustav Mahler, a grid-patterned box belonging to the fascinating Emilie Floge, who served as a muse for artist Gustav Klimt, and several extraordinary Hoffmann creations purchased by the wealthy upper middle class Wittgenstein family, including a pagoda-like desk thermometer.

An impressive book has been published in connection with the show including a history of the modern movement in Vienna and biographies of more than a dozen silversmiths connected with the Wiener Werkstatte (Viennese Silver, Hatje Cantz Publishers, 398 pages, $60).