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Lot 115
A rare Miniature Room set in the style of Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser’s Viennese Succession movement, circa 1908, the wooden (probably birch) cube with double hinged lid and lift-out front panel held closed by hooks and eyes, the exterior decorated with geometric stencilled star pattern fitted with two pairs of black, hinged, window shutters and a turned wooden bell-push as light switch to right side. Interior walls painted in orange with yellow and black chequer and dot frieze. Ceiling with hanging lampshade of strings of green glass beads with light wired to battery compartment wardrobe. Floor with chequer patterned carpet in beige and black. Suite of wooden furniture all painted in grey with white dot border decoration comprising wardrobe with bevel glass mirror door, bed with pillows, mattress, embroidered sheet and blanket with black and green geometric patterned sides and green bobble decoration, bedside pot cupboard and planter, dressing table with metal looking glass, square box table and two stools, two seat sofa with embroidered cushions, two arm chairs with embroidered cushions and seated bisque doll wearing black and white chequer dress , blue card folding screen with hand-painted, white, green and black geometric decoration, two plain white ‘sheer’ curtains hung on metal rings on curtain rail. Walls decorated with two hand painted pictures (woman with cat and winged angel – the latter slightly reminiscent of Gustav Klimt’s painting ‘Hoffnung II’), two embroidered pictures and one bevel glass mirror, all in metal frames hung by cord, 8 5/8x8 5/8 x 8 5/8 inches (22x22x22cm). History and Provenance: At the end of the 19th century young progressive artists in Vienna set up the break-away movement known as the Secession. Amongst its prominent members were the architect Josef Hoffmann (1870-1956) and the designer Koloman Moser (1868-1918). Both were ‘admirers of English applied art; the mood in the world of Viennese applied art around 1900 was Anglophile and progressive’. Work of the British designers, C.R. Ashbee and C.R. Mackintosh who were viewed as the inheritors of the Ruskin-Morris tradition, featured in their 1900 exhibition and influenced subsequent design developments in Vienna. Ashbee’s work was exhibited regularly in Vienna during the first decade of the 20th century. In 1903 Hoffmann and Moser founded the “Wiener Werkstätte, Produktivgenossenschaft von Kunsthandwerkern in Wien” after Hoffmann had been to England and very probably visited Ashbee’s socialist co-operative, “The Guild of Handicraft”. ‘The declared aim of the Wiener Werkstätte was to vanquish the evils of machine manufacturing and the mass production to which it had given rise. It also wished to re-establish direct contact between consumer and producer.’ Artists wished to unify art and life and interior design offered the opportunity to put this into practice. One of the most notable examples was the Purkersdorf Sanatorium designed by Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser in 1904-1906 – ‘a synthesis of form and function, of aesthetics and economy, of the outer form…and the activities pursued within’ – where contrasting squares of colour occur throughout. The use of chequered patterns became a sort of Hoffmann trade mark and they featured again, for example, in his design for the Cabaret Fledermaus in 1907. In 1908 Hoffmann designed the exhibition pavilions for the Kunstschau in Vienna that featured the work of Gustav Klimt and his followers as well as the Wiener Werkstätte. Within that exhibition was a special hall, room 29, which was devoted to Kunst für das Kind (Art for the child) and included a number of dolls houses designed and made by students at the Kunstschule für Frauen und Mädchen under the direction of Professor Adolf Böhm. So far it has not been possible to establish whether the doll’s roomset offered here was actually one of those exhibits but it was undoubtedly inspired by and made as a tribute to the work of Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser at around this period. It was acquired by the English furniture designer and retailer Ambrose Heal and found its way to England. The period at the turn of the twentieth century was exactly the time when Ambrose Heal (1872-1959) was at his most productive and in contact with the latest design developments across Europe. Before he had set up his own cabinet workshops, his very first bedroom suite designs were manufactured by C.R. Ashbee’s ‘Guild of Handicraft’ in 1897. Ambrose Heal (he was knighted in 1933 and elected a Royal Designer for Industry in 1939) was the man who was responsible for establishing the high design standards for which the Heal family furnishing business in London became known. He had begun using chequer patterns in his designs as early as 1900 but from 1902 it featured prominently not only on furniture but as a border to the company’s advertising. He would therefore have followed with interest its subsequent adoption and development by Hoffmann. Another interesting parallel is that from 1908 onwards Heal’s began to specialise in children’s furniture so that they were invited to furnish an ‘Ideal Modern Nursery’ at the ‘Children’s Welfare Exhibition’ held at Olympia in 1912. An inventory carried out in February 1914 at Ambrose Heal’s home, ‘The Fives Court’, Pinner, by Maple & Co. for the purpose of insurance, listed under the contents of the drawing room “Viennese small wood dolls house & toys £2 2s 0d”. It has remained in the family ever since.
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