Viennese silver (modern design 1780-1918)    

This sumptuously illustrated volume presents over 180 outstanding Viennese silver objects representing the period from Neoclassicism to the Wiener Werkstätte. Comparing early eighteenth-century works with examples of twentieth-century design and architecture, it offers a fascinating look at Vienna's contribution to the development of modern decorative arts. The authors demonstrate how the roots of modern design go back further than is generally assumed. Achieving remarkable clarity and formal reduction, Viennese Biedermeier designers created everyday objects of silver with astonishingly straightforward and purposeful forms that remain as progressive as ever today. In turn-of-the-century Vienna, Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser drew inspiration from the intellectual legacy of the period in their designs for the Wiener Werkstätte. Many of the ideas introduced by the Viennese avant-garde were later expressed in such movements as the Bauhaus and De Stijl. By examining this history in all its complexity, the book traces the development of the vocabulary for contemporary design.