Metamorphoses: the interiors and furniture of Dagobert Peche - designer

Magazine Antiques, Oct, 2002 by Anne-Katrin Rossberg

A recurring subject of articles about early twentieth-century arts and crafts written about the time of World War I was the distinction between the Austrian and the German way of making everyday objects. It was generally agreed that the former was more sensitive and individualistic, meaning that the Austrians did not follow rational criteria alone. The Germans considered this approach "playful," (1) implying not only formal but moral criticism because during World War I the production of functional objects was synonymous with social responsibility. Austrians did not ignore this issue but dealt with their wretched conditions by creating contrasting surroundings, pitting imagination against reality and beauty against suffering.

Dagobert Peche was a master of this form of escapism. By always giving his feelings the upper hand, he created a decorative language of surprising scope. His mentor, Josef Hoffmann (1870-1956), was very much aware of this. The cofounder of the Wiener Werkstatte (1903-1932), Hoffmann had gradually abandoned the original intention of producing solid, simple everyday objects in favor of creating a lavish Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art) He hired Peche in 1915 as the artistic manager of the Wiener Werkstatte, by which time Peche had mapped Out his repertory. Working for the Werkstatte allowed him to develop his work without having to worry about day-to-day survival.

It is interesting to consider Peche's life up to this time. He grew up in the country, went to school in Salzburg, and then studied architecture in Vienna. The places near Salzburg and in Upper Austria where he spent his childhood greatly influenced his creative evolution. Nature was the countryman's foremost subject, which the artist in the city then adapted to suit himself. Bowing to his father's wish by studying architecture ran very much counter to Peche's inclinations and to the kind of objects he produced later. Nevertheless, studying architecture with Professor Friedrich Ohmann (1858-1927) in Vienna was beneficial. Having to copy Gothic, Renaissance, and baroque masterpieces could not fail to instill in the students an appreciation for the arts of the past.

As a result, after completing his studies, Peche occupied himself with drawing. However, he made neither copies nor architectural designs, but illustrations for imagined stories. Two of these series were entitled "Liebe und Tand" (Love and baubles) and "Die Schatulle" (The casket), and excerpts form them were published in the well-known magazine Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration in 1913. Although the style of his drawings undoubtedly recalls the graphic work of Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898), (2) the subjects of Peche's illustrations in black, white, and gold are different--a "small world, easy to master," as he once put it. (3) An example might be a bed curtain or dress fabric, a hat feather, a string of pearls, candlesticks, side tables or chairs. Furniture was always his preferred interest. By looking at it from a fresh and original perspective he raised it to an art form (see Fig. 3 and Pl. XI).

In a drawing from "Liebe und Tand" (Pl.III), a rather exuberant-looking armchair is surrounded by candlesticks forming a mystical circle. Two playful naked children break up the formal arrangement, one even bouncing up and down in the chair. The contradictory juxtaposition of ceremony and play, careful composition and naturalness, and the use of sinister black and carefree gold are characteristic of Peche's art, for he himself was full of contradictions. His contemporaries described him as both a mischievous naif and a brooding introvert. In a memorial one critic wrote:

There were two currents in Peche. One day he felt like filling his room with glitter stuff with flowers and ribbons, with silk and lace, with gold paper and garlands... and the next he would empty it, take everything out, and stick large stone squares on the walls. There were two currents in Peche: one fluttering, the other solid, settled, one exuberant, the other quietly reflective. (4)

Both sides of the man were there from the beginning and affected all his work. His first chairs were made for his own apartment and are a useful guide to the future (see Pl. II). The design is the result of Peche's interest in the French rococo, which inspired him during a visit of several weeks to Paris in 1912. (5) He incorporated his own imagery of flowers, leaves, strings of pearls, and feathers, elongated the back of the chair, streamlined the legs, and then covered the white and gold frame with a textile of his own design (Pl. VII). Reminiscent of Gustav Klimt's ornament, it points the way to the art of the 1960s. (6)

Something similar happens in the completely different treatment of the dining chair in Plate IV. Peche arrested the transformation of the model at the precise moment when it was still recognizable. In this case he allowed himself to be influenced by the Austrian Biedermeier style, but he intensified it. The delicate lines of a Biedermeier chair here assume stout contours, emphasizing the solidity of the construction. We see in this work the architect, the "quietly reflective" man, who attempts to "bring order to chaos." (7) Yet how widely divergent his ideas could be is demonstrated by a wallpaper design with a repeated diamond grid from 1921 (Pl. VIII). He called this abstract, "rational," pattern Das Wasser (Water).