Metamorphoses: the interiors and furniture of Dagobert Peche - designer

Magazine Antiques, Oct, 2002 by Anne-Katrin Rossberg

The small vitrine table shown in Plate IX is related to the decoration of the Zurich salesroom, although it is part of another set of furniture used in a window display It represents the moderate trend in Peche's design repertory and is indebted to Hoffmann's neoclassicism. About 1912 Hoffmann was partial to square, fluted table legs, stained black and sometimes decorated with small leaves or flowers. Peche lightened them by narrowing them at the bottom, painting them white, and making the leafy decoration an organic part of the design. This way the "ornament seems to grow naturally from the material" rather than being "imposed by human thought." (3) Peche used the same ensemble of furniture again in the Wiener Werkstatte's fashion showroom at the 1921 Frankfurter Messe (Frankfurt fair). The legs are sprouting, like the laurel, which is also reflected in the wallpaper in Peche's Daphne pattern.

Peche found another literary source for the transformation theme in The True History by the Greek satirist Lucian (c. 120-c. 180). (14) He may have come across the book through Beardsley's illustrations for it. (15) There is a scene in these fantastical travel tales in which humans are turned into grapevines as punishment for unbridled lust. In his later work Peche was particularly partial to grape motifs. Grapes are, of course, also a prominent Christian symbol, and it is the juxtaposition of the pagan and Christian sources that turns the grapes into a typically ambiguous Peche theme.

For the Kunstschau (art exhibition) of 1920 in Vienna, Peche designed two Schranke, or cabinets, one of which is shown on the cover and in Plate VI. With its central female head surrounded by red and white berries and green and white leaves, it caused a violent reaction. There was talk of tasteless objects out of a nightmare. The public, traumatized by political events, was incapable of dealing with Peche's creations and felt ridiculed. In the public mind, furniture had to be functional, not monstrous.

There is no doubt, as the art historian Max Eisler (1881-1937) pointed out, that Peche's work is antisocial, "self-serving, unrealistic, modern, and timeless." (16) Nowadays, it seems up-to-date in the sense that it anticipated the postmodern interest in everyday objects. His design for Pyramide als Mobel fur den Garten (Pyramid as furniture for the garden) (Pl. X) sprouts heads and bunches of grapes and grape leaves. It is a spoof on furniture design in its shape, dimensions, and function.

Obviously, only the well-to-do could afford Peche's illusionistic creations, but toward the end of his life he came to deplore "the entire Wiener Werkstatte production for only a few people with money." (17) Nonetheless, in 1921 Peche acquired a new patron, Wolko Gartenberg, who had private means and gave Peche full rein to design the living and dining rooms of his apartment in the center of Vienna. Peche turned them into a veritable temple for the educated bourgeoisie. He covered the walls of the living room (Fig. 1) with striped wallpaper so dramatically shaded that the room assumes the appearance of a columned hall. The wall is no longer a boundary but has become architecture. While the Secession chest of 1913 (Pl. V) was lightened by a repeat pattern, here the wallpaper assumes volume and opens the room into infinity. At the same time Peche nullified the effect of the deep shading in the furniture, thereby establishing one of the contradictions he always valued. In conventional fashion he covered the upho lstered furniture, pillows, and lampshades, with the shaded material. However, in this case, covering already three-dimensional objects with an illusionistic three-dimensional cloth cancels out the illusion of infinite volume so successfully established by the wallpaper.