Vase, 1906

Together with Michael Powolny (1871–1954), the painter, graphic artist and designer Bertold Löffler (1874–1960) founded the ceramics workshop Wiener Keramik in 1905. The company closely collaborated with the Wiener Werkstätte, was taken over in 1913 by Gmundner Keramik, and successfully continued under the name Vereinigte Wiener und Gmundner Keramik. This vase is an early work produced by the manufactory. With its simple repertoire of forms it is still wholly indebted to the geometricizing Viennese Jugendstil. Löffler’s reduced design is composed only of the three basic geometrical forms of cone, cylinder and square, and features a white glaze, with the four blue-glazed cubes at the foot of the vase providing the only accents of color.

MR, 2021