Metamorphoses: the interiors and furniture of Dagobert Peche - designer

Magazine Antiques, Oct, 2002 by Anne-Katrin Rossberg

There is a confluence of the two currents in a reception room Peche created in 1913 for the forty-fifth Secession exhibition in Vienna (Fig. 4). In the room was a chest that contained so many contradictions it really should have exploded (Pl. V). It seems instead to be moving; its eight slender curved legs seem to carry the heavy top across the room. Golden bouquets of the familiar Peche flowers, leaves, and strings of pearls decorate the polished black front like the pattern repeat of a fabric or wallpaper. Surface and volume, lightness (gold) and solidity (black) are the distinctive features of this object, yet they are in harmony Grooves have tamed the rococo leg, and the severe cube is enlivened by glitzerndem Zeug (glitter stuff), but applied in a disciplined pattern. The highlight of this well-balanced system is that both facades open. "Paradoxical and incredibly persuasive, sensitive and yet ironical," wrote a critic six years later about Peche's work, (8) emphasizing that his creations should be judge d as works of art, not utilitarian objects.

The Secession interior shown in Figure 4 was called a reception room and was usable as such, since it contained the chest (P1. V), a suite of furniture, several side chairs, and tables, besides the two pieces pictured in the photograph. However, the room was not intended as a prototype for a potential client. Within the context of an art exhibition, Peche was free to draw on his innermost thoughts to create a uniquely personal environment. In a letter to a friend in Salzburg he explained his enchanted world:

It would be a blessing for every woman to have a presentment, then to shut them away alone with only beauty, with no sound, with heavy curtains, gold chandeliers, with candlelight now flickering gently, now flaring. I think that is where they were all born, for the batik curtain, for white-and-gold furniture, for rooms with infinitely high ceilings, for delicate ribbons and silk. (9)

Here we have the most important elements of Peche's interior and furniture designs: textiles, light, colors, and high-ceilinged rooms. Peche was able to create this dreamworld by breaking up a wall with a row of narrow windows, by giving the illusion of height with columns and pilasters, and by blurring the borders of a room. Stars flash on the walls of the reception room. These were one of Peche's favorite motifs, and these emblems of his universe were later to become his signature.

Installing an entire exhibition in the winter of 1915 finally provided Peche with the opportunity to deploy his repertory. In the face of the cold weather and the war he created a fairy-tale setting for the Mode-Ausstellung (fashion exhibition) in the Osterreichisches Museum fur Kunst und Industrie in Vienna (today the MAK-Osterreichisches Museum fur angewandte Kunst). For this installation he turned a columned hall into a bright, seemingly endless room, flooded with pink light, while around it was a low-ceilinged corridor with strong black-and-white decoration, inspiring a sense of confinement and enhancing the feeling of relief on entering the main hall (see Fig. 2). The wallpaper in the corridor in a pattern Peche called Rom (Rome) is decorated with the same bouquet that appears on the chest in Plate V. By using the same design in two mediums, Peche worked once again with illusion, blurring lines. Wood became textile; textile became architecture. The other materials he used show the same fluidity. In his h ands ceramics could resemble tin, glass could resemble porcelain, and paper could resemble metal. There was nothing new about such deceptions--they persisted throughout the nineteenth century. However, Peche was not interested in one medium imitating another, but rather in secrets and suspense.