War Glass, 1918

In World War I, the Wiener Werkstätte and the manufacturing businesses collaborating with it were facing personnel shortages and sales difficulties. One attempted way to compensate was the successful production of war glasses, all the more so since the Ministry of Public Works made an appeal to art-makers in 1915 to “express the patriotic purpose” in their works. Already February of that same year, the Austrian Museum of Art and Industry had shown an exhibition of War-Commemorative Articles. If it was a plain cylindrical drinking glass, it was painted with a line pattern in enamels, often in the colors of the flags of the allied Central Powers. In this case, the German Empire’s black-white-gold was stylized into a striped pattern.

IR, 2021