Small Silver Dish with Lapis Lazuli, 1904

This small silver dish was designed by the co-founder of the Wiener Werkstätte, the architect and designer Josef Hoffmann (1870–1956), in 1904. The basic geometrical vocabulary Hoffmann used here is characteristic for the first phase of the Wiener Werkstätte, founded in 1903. The oval dish’s retracted wall consists of a piece of wrought rolled silver with a hammered finish effect. The ellipse’s four vertices are reinforced with soldered vertical three-part braces. The upper parts of these “supports” were given a rectangular shape and adorned with lapis lazuli inlays, which also boast an oval shape, thus reflecting Hoffmann’s basic “oval” principle. The design was executed in silver by the Wiener Werkstätte.

MR, 2023