ART NOUVEAU DOMESTIC METALWORK

Introduction

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Contents Foreword

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WMF - The History until 1914

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The Artists The 1906 English Catalogue The Marks Select Bibliography Books and Magazine Articles The Catalogue

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Introduction

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THE ANTIQUE COLLECTORS’ CLUB Formed in 1966, the Antique Collectors’ Club is now a world-renowned publisher of top quality books for the collector. It also publishes the only independently-run monthly antiques magazine, Antique Collecting, which rose quickly from humble beginnings to a network of worldwide subscribers.

The magazine, whose motto is For Collectors-By Collectors-About Collecting, is aimed at collectors interested in widening their knowledge of antiques both by increasing their awareness of quality and by discussion of the factors influencing prices.

Subscription to Antique Collecting is open to anyone interested in antiques, and subscribers receive ten issues a year. Well-illustrated articles deal with practical aspects of collecting and provide numerous tips on prices, features of value, investment potential, fakes and forgeries. Offers of related books at special reduced prices are also available only to subscribers.

In response to the enormous demand for information on ‘what to pay’, ACC introduced in 1968 the famous price guide series.The first title, The Price Guide to Antique Furniture, now renamed British Antique Furniture: Price Guide and Reasons for Values, is regularly updated and in constant demand.

Since those pioneering days, ACC has gone from strength to strength, publishing many of today’s standard works of reference on all things antique and collectable, from Tiaras to 20th Century Ceramic Designers in Britain.

Not only has ACC continued to cater strongly for its original audience, it has also branched out to produce excellent titles on many subjects including art reference, architecture, garden design, fashion, and textiles. All ACC’s publications are available through bookshops worldwide and a catalogue is available free of charge from the addresses below.

For further information please contact: www.antiquecollectorsclub.com Antique Collectors’ Club Sandy Lane, Old Martlesham Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 4SD, UK Tel: 01394 389950 Fax: 01394 389999 Email: info@antique-acc.com or ACC Distribution 6 West 18th Street, Suite 4B, New York, NY 10011 Tel: 212 645 1111 Fax: 212 989 3205 Email: sales@antiquecc.com

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Introduction

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1. Straub & Schweizer catalogue, Geislingen 1859. 21.5 x 13.5cm.WMF Archives, Geislingen.

2. Urn. Silver-plated, electro-typed bronze. WMF, Geislingen, c.1890. Height: 50.5cm; diameter of base 18cm. Unmarked. WMF, Geislingen, Inventory No. 10/2510.

produced in ever-increasing quantities in Esslingen (Carl Deffner) and Göppingen (Rau & Co.).As a prospective centre for the production of metalware, Geislingen, however - a small town in the Swabian Alb between Göppingen and Ulm - had one distinct advantage.The town had enjoyed a long history of the manufacture of carved and turned bone and ivory articles since the early 15th century and could therefore provide a reservoir of skilled craftsmen ready to become modellers, engravers, draughtsmen, brass-founders, chasers and turners in a metalworking industry.

By 1856, the new firm of Straub & Schweizer employed 60 workers and was producing an array of tea-kettles, candelabra and carriage-lamps in particular, as well as all kinds of household articles.2 These were manufactured either from copper-plate patinated to resemble bronze or by the 'close-

2. Gewerbe-und Handels-Adressbuch für Württemberg. Herausgegeben von der Königl. Centralstelle für Gewerbe und Handel in Stuttgart, Stuttgart 1855, p.76. x

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plating' process invented in 1742 by Thomas Bolsover in Sheffield, introduced to Germany in 1810

by Carl Deffner in Esslingen, and known today as 'Sheffield Plate' or 'copper rolled plate'. In this process, a layer of silver was sweated on to a sheet of copper, after which the two metals were rolled or drawn to the required thickness.3 First catalogues of the firm's production appeared in 1856, 1859 (1) and 1863. Among the silverplated wares produced were work-baskets, soup-bowls, ashtrays for cigars, egg-cups, icebuckets, money-boxes, coffee-pots, candelabra, knife-rests, saucières, servietterings, mouthpieces for naval captains, brushes, soup-tureens, plates, tea-caddies, toilet-mirrors and sugar-castors. Other categories were copper items, nickel-silver, brass and glass articles, and, significantly for future developments, a wide range of cutlery.These early catalogues already offer a selection of plated goods that were to appear regularly, if in varying artistic styles, in all future catalogues published by the Geislingen company.

In 1862, Straub & Schweizer, 'Fabrikanten von silberplattirten und bronzirten Kupferwaaren', Geislingen, exhibited their products - among them a 'Victoria Tray', richly chased, a 'Victoria sugarbowl' and a parcel-gilt 'Victoria bread-basket' - at the International Exhibition in London.4 The company was awarded a Prize Medal and its international success heralded a period of further expansion at the Geislingen factory, during which Gottlieb Daimler, later to become the founder of the Daimler works in Untertürkheim near Stuttgart, was employed by Straub as chief engineer in the Geislingen Maschinenfabrik.

By 1866, the number of workers employed by Straub and Schweizer had increased to 120. In the course of this year, the Schweizer brothers withdrew from the business, allowing Straub to take on his only son Heinrich as partner in the new firm of 'Straub & Sohn'. A first showroom was opened in Berlin in 1868 and from this year onwards further showrooms were established in all the important German cities, as well as in foreign capitals.

In the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1, Germany enjoyed an extended period of growing prosperity marked in the decorative arts by a patriotic revival of forms and ornaments borrowed from earlier periods of German art. Straub & Sohn's Main Catalogue of 1876, which illustrates 966 utilitarian and highly ornamented luxury articles for the table, reflects the rise and increasing wealth of the German middle-classes.The company relied at this period solely on manual labour, and at the end of the decade the technical equipment at the disposal of Straub & Sohn's workforce of 220 consisted of little more than lathes and various rolling-mills.

In 1880, Straub & Sohn took the vital decision which was to lead to a reshaping of the company's manufacturing methods and to a consequently dramatic increase in production. The technique of electro-plating, discovered in 1837 by M.H. Jacobi in Dorpat, and Spencer in Liverpool, and perfected by Elkington & Co. in Birmingham in 1840, had been assuming a growing importance during the 1870s to German manufacturers of metal goods. Electroplated flatware had first been exhibited at the 1867 Paris Exposition Universelle. Wieland & Co., an Ulm factory, had at once taken steps to add an electro-plating workshop to their existing buildings and entrusted the necessary experiments to the factory's technical director Wiegandt and to a student of chemistry, Carl Haegele. Haegele, together with his brother-in-law Alfred Ritter, subsequently founded the firm of 'A. Ritter & Co.,Versilberungsanstalt, Stuttgart' in 1871 for the production of electro-plated goods. In the following year, the company moved to Esslingen and within a short space of time these new goods became extremely popular, owing to their novelty and attractive patterns which the electro-plating technique was able to provide at moderate prices.

Numerous improvements were introduced in the factory, several flywheel and eccentric stamps being installed and, in 1875, a metal-buffing shop in the Parisian style was added. A

3. Straub & Schweizer were known colloquially as the 'Plaqué Factory' on account of this method of production: see 'The Rise and Fall ...', op.cit., p.2.

4. Londoner Ausstellung 1862. Special-Catalog der Gewerblichen Ausstellung des Zollvereins, herausgegeben von den Commissarien der Zollvereins-Regierungen, Berlin 1862, No.2859, p.187, and No.2872, p.188-9. xi

Catalogue 001-076

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Catalogue 139-190

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Catalogue 243-294

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Catalogue 327-389

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