Chair Hans Bolek attr. School of Josef Hoffmann 1913
Chair, Hans Bolek attr. (design), August Ungethüm Möbelfabrik Wien (execution), 1913
Lit.: Photograph of an interior designed by Hans Bolek and executed by August Ungethüm, August Ungethüm Furniture Manufactory, MAK Inv. no. KI 7905-13 / Kunst und Kunsthandwerk XVI, 1913, issue 12, p. 629 / Exhibition of Austrian Applied Arts 1913–1914. Vienna: Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art, 1913. Print.
Description
This original Jugendstil armchair was designed in 1913 by Hans Bolek (presumably for the Exhibition of Austrian Applied Arts 1913/14 at the Austrian Museum of Art and Industry in Vienna) and executed by the August Ungethüm furniture manufactory in Vienna (Obere Amtshausgasse 27, 1050 Vienna). Both designers were pupils of Professor Josef Hoffmann at the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts and thus belong to the direct tradition of the Wiener Werkstätte. The piece combines the design principles of moderate modernism with a rigorous architectural clarity characteristic of Viennese design around 1915.
Hans Bolek, whose work focused primarily on jewellery and the decorative arts on a smaller scale, left behind only a small number of furniture designs. Particularly noteworthy in this context is his contribution to the Exhibition of Austrian Applied Arts 1913–1914 at the Austrian Museum of Art and Industry in Vienna. There, Bolek presented a gentleman’s room furnished in semi-matt polished bog oak, featuring distinctive foliate ornament, panelled detailing and ribbed wooden fronts (as seen on a side table and two armchairs) – all executed by August Ungethüm.
The ensemble was presented as part of the renowned Winter Exhibition of 1913/1914 at the Austrian Museum of Art and Industry (ÖMKI). On 6 November 1913, it was acquired by the then Minister of Public Works, Baron Ottokar Trnka von Laberon – an event that eloquently underscores the cultural and political significance of this institution. International interior design magazines and daily newspapers already praised the gentleman’s room at the time of its creation for its pioneering stylistic quality and masterful craftsmanship.
ARTIST
Hans Bolek (Vienna 1890 – 1978 Vienna) was an Austrian architect and designer. Born in Vienna in 1890, he studied at the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts with Josef Hoffmann from 1906 to 1910. At the same time, he was also an employee in the studio of Otto Prutscher. In 1910, Bolek became self-employed as an architect and in 1914 he was a founding member of the Austrian Werkbund. He provided designs for buildings and, as a versatile designer, created furniture, ceramics, glass and jewellery. After the Second World War, Bolek taught at the Vienna Fashion School from 1946 to 1962 and worked as a painter and graphic artist. Bolek died in Vienna in 1978.
Glass collectors know the name Bolek because of his glass designs for the company Johann Loetz Witwe. Between 1912 and 1917, Bolek created numerous designs for form and decoration for the Loetz glass manufacture, including vessels that were explicitly intended for presentation at the famous Werkbund exhibition in Cologne in 1914. These so-called “Werkbundgläser” are not only an impressive testimony of technical mastery, their modern decors also differ fundamentally from the Jugendstil décors of the “phenomenon genres” from the Loetz company.
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