Stool for the Stonborough-Wittgenstein Apartment in Berlin, 1905
Leopold Museum, Vienna
Stool for the Stonborough-Wittgenstein Apartment in Berlin 1905
Beech, white setting, original fabric cover “Lange Ohren” (designed by Josef Hoffmann, 1902)
47×42×42 cm
Artists
Wiener Werkstätte
Josef Hoffmann
(Pirnitz 1870–1956 Vienna)
Unfortunately not on display at the moment
Coming from a Viennese industrialist family, Margarete Wittgenstein (1882–1958) married the New York factory owner Jerome Stonborough (1873–1938) and moved to Berlin with him. The interior decoration of the newlyweds’ apartment was done by Josef Hoffmann (1870–1956) und Koloman Moser (1868–1918). Hoffmann created the furnishings for the dining, gentlemen’s, guest, and servant’s rooms, the last-mentioned being the one for which this white stool reduced to a cubic shape probably was intended. Notwithstanding the simplicity of the cubiform body, the alternation of squares standing on a corner and semicircles as braces to stabilize the construction makes for a slightly playful effect.