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History Of Modern Design Term Paper

¶ … 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...

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…

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Works Cited

"Introduction to Wiener Werkstatte." Artsmia.org. 2004. http://www.artsmia.org/modernism/rtxt.html

Razerman, David. History of Modern Design. Chapter 5. p.93-96, Chapter 7 p.129-133.

Schwartz, Frederic J. The Werkbund: Design Theory and Mass Culture Before the First World War. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1996.
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