Mother-of-pearl and black leather desk set, Austria, 1910, 5 pieces

Mother-of-pearl desk set
CIRC.363-1976: Inkstand, rectangular, veneered with rectangular plaques of mother-of-pearl and inlaid with horizontal stringing of ebony, with hollowed-out areas to support candlestick and penholder.
CIRC.363D-1976: Candlestick, rectangular, veneered with rectangular plaques of mother-of-pearl, the whole length inlaid with 2 vertical strings of ebony per side, the top with circular silver-plated inset to hold a candle.
CIRC.363C-1976: Penholder, rectangular, veneered with rectangular plaques of mother-of-pearl, the whole length inlaid with two vertical strings of ebony per side, the top with circular silver-plated inset to hold pens.
CIRC.363E-1976: Seal, rectangular, veneered with rectangular plaques of mother-of-pearl, the whole length inlaid with one vertical string of ebony per side, the top with square silver-plated inset.
CIRC.363B-1976: Card holder, rectangular with one side higher than the other, the sides veneered with rectangular plaques of mother-of-pearl, and inlaid with vertical stringing of ebony, the sloping top with a rectangular inlaid pocket of leather.

(Bought from Michael Pruskin)
(Registered Papers 76/1290)

Small luxury objects veneered in mother-of-pearl were produced in great numbers in Vienna in the Biedermeier period between 1815 and 1840. Their Wiener Werkstätte successors from about 1900 were doubtless consciously echoing those prototypes. However while Biedermeier products delighted in mother-of-pearl for its simple gaudiness, it seems likely that Hoffmann and his contemporaries also savoured its voluptuous suggestiveness. This taste is nicely exemplified in a painting of 1909 by Oskar Zwintscher (1870-1916), 'Gold and Perlmutter', in which a reclining symbolist femme fatale bedecked only in gold jewellery reclines beside a casket of mother-of-pearl. In 1912 the Österreichisches Museum für angewandte Kunst paid 300 crowns to the Wiener Werkstätte for a cigarette box with very similar decoration to this desk-set. Another matching set is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (1977.72.1-5).

Small luxury objects veneered in mother-of-pearl were produced in great numbers in Vienna in the Biedermeier period (1815-1840). About 60 years later the designers of the Wiener Werkstätte were doubtless consciously echoing those prototypes, although the shape of the early 20th-century pieces is squarer and their decoration much more geometrical. In 1912 the Österreichisches Museum für angewandte Kunst (Austrian Museum of Applied Arts) paid the large sum of 300 crowns to the Wiener Werkstätte for one cigarette box with very similar decoration to this desk set.

CIRC.363:B to D-1976