2024-05-15 06:21:23
The human hand is Carl Auböck’s benchmark. And never simply because a paperweight within the form of a stylized hand product of stable brass is without doubt one of the workshop’s iconic merchandise. The catalog of the Viennese producer, based in 1912, contains round 470 merchandise, most of which may be simply picked up and utilized in one hand: paperweights, corkscrews, ashtrays, desk bells, bookends, nutcrackers, shoehorns, candlesticks, knives, combs, key rings. The entire cosmos of little issues that enliven our households and our on a regular basis lives.
A few of the objects appear to return from a time lengthy gone: pipe stands or fountain pen rests are relics of habits and rituals that hardly anybody maintains anymore. Others, equivalent to watering cans, coat hooks or bottle stoppers, are timelessly helpful and can be found from Carl Auböck in refined, inheritance-worthy variations. The hand is already the benchmark as a result of all the attractive, little issues are largely made by hand. Brass is forged, filed, floor and patinated, together with components product of leather-based, horn, wooden, bamboo and rattan. These are all supplies of pure origin, processed by hand, which age properly and which the human hand likes to the touch.
And: At Carl Auböck, the boss himself lends a hand. Carl Auböck IV greets the guests to the manufacturing unit in Vienna’s seventh district carrying a leather-based apron; the agency strain of his tough hand identifies him as a craftsman. There are small brass snakes on the work desk, an order for a buyer from America that the septuagenarian has simply been engaged on. He turns down the jazz music and asks straight: “What do you wish to know?”
The place do you wish to begin?
The straightforward query, in Viennese phrases, is troublesome to reply: Over 110 years of firm historical past, on the similar time modern, artwork and household historical past, from the founder Karl Heinrich Auböck to Carl Auböck II, III, IV and V. Not forgetting the ladies, presently the daughter Zola Auböck or as soon as the artist Mara Uckunowa, who run the enterprise along with the lads of their title. In any case, the trail into historical past is brief for the Auböcks: the 2 small rooms within the archive are straight adjoining to the workshop. It is only some steps from the sander that is bringing coat hooks to a shine to the cabinets which are full from high to backside. The place do you wish to begin?
Paperweights of a distinct type: items from the late Nineteen FortiesMAK/Christian Mendez
The newly opened exhibition within the MAK Museum for Utilized Arts in Vienna “Iconic Auböck. A workshop shapes the Austrian idea of design” copes with the abundance by drawing strains of kinship with trendy artwork, particularly surrealism. In an interview, curator Bärbel Vischer from MAK refers back to the recurring motifs from surrealist artwork within the Auböck’chen Dingwelt, the hand, the foot, the attention, the egg, the important thing and the clock.
A nook of the workshop: The hand is already the benchmark as a result of all the attractive, little issues are largely made by handNadine Poncioni
The idea of the Objet trouvé has additionally taken product type within the type of pierced billiard balls as a pen holder or a stone set in leather-based as a paperweight. The exhibition on the MAK presents round 400 historic reveals, particularly the helpful objects, but in addition small furnishings equivalent to aspect tables and newspaper racks, lamps and chairs.
By no means simply craftsmen
Again to the workshop on Bernhardgasse, conventional Viennese manufacturing space, 4 staff together with the boss plus 20 extra at suppliers in Vienna and the encircling space. The truth that of town’s as soon as numerous craft companies, the chasing workshops, belt makers, goldsmiths and bronze foundries, Carl Auböck of all individuals has survived all of the passages of time and is prospering at this time – “We’re a profitable firm,” says Carl IV – is actually attributable to the truth that the Auböcks from the second technology have been by no means simply craftsmen.
Picture from the fifties: Carl Auböck II (proper)Carl Auböck workshop
The incumbent Carl not solely designs merchandise, he additionally runs an architectural workplace on the second ground above the workshop and switches between work areas as wanted, Monday to Friday, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Like him, his father Carl III was a skilled craftsman and architect, had studied on the Massachusetts Institute of Expertise within the early Fifties and introduced contemporary design concepts again to the stagnant post-war Vienna.
Carl II, alternatively, the creator of many Auböck icons such because the hand, had as soon as studied on the early creative Bauhaus in Weimar. This not solely allowed him to take a totally new inventive path, but in addition made contacts in America by Walter Gropius – an vital marketplace for the workshop to at the present time. His involvement with Nationwide Socialism is understood, however has but to be researched, because the exhibition catalog of “Iconic Auböck” notes.
Carl V, the son of the present boss and in addition a designer, architect and craftsman, welds uncommon bike fairings product of sheet steel in a room subsequent to his father’s office within the workshop. Will he ever be a part of the corporate and take over his father’s job? Carl IV simply shrugs his shoulders. Generational conflicts are inevitable with such a dynasty of idiosyncratic minds. He typically has the sensation that his father is trying critically over his shoulder at work. That will even be a burden, however the dialogue along with his ancestors and their designs determines his actions: “We proceed to work repeatedly within the spirit of the workshop.”
The exhibition may be seen from Wednesday, Could fifteenth till October thirteenth, 2024.
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