Werkstätte Hagenauer Wien

Werkstätte Hagenauer Wien - (wHw) - was a family business in Vienna that produced fine, handcrafted objects for decoration and use over its nearly ninety-year history. The workshop closed in 1987 but the company's retail premises, opened in 1938 on Vienna's Opernring, survives today as a museum and shop.

Carl Hagenauer (1872 - 1928) founded what became the Werkstätte Hagenauer Wien in 1898. He began as an apprentice at Würbel & Czokally, a silverware producer in Vienna. He then trained as a goldsmith before founding his own business, one of many in Vienna producing small figurines and useful objects. His workshop produced his own designs and those of other artists such as Josef Hoffmann and Otto Prutscher. His sons Karl (1898 - 1956) and Franz (1906 - 1986) both became renowned designers.

Karl was an influential designer in the Art Deco style. He enrolled at the Vienna School of Applied Arts at age eleven. He studied with Josef Hoffmann and Oskar Strnad and created designs for the Wiener Werkstätte art collective. After wartime service in the infantry, he resumed his training and qualified as an architect. He joined the family business in 1919 and soon took on leadership in both design and management.

Karl Hagenauer was responsive to the change in public taste influenced by the popularity of the Vienna Secession. His stylized animals and whimsical creatures (reminiscent of Wiener Werkstätte designer Dagobert Peche) handcrafted in brass had broad appeal in domestic and American markets. Some were useful, such as mirrors, cigar cutters, ashtrays, cigarette stubbers - many in the form of athletes or animals, candlesticks, corkscrews, bookends, and lamp bases. Figurines, hood ornaments and other larger sculptures in wood and metal (such as the iconic Josephine Baker in the collection of the Casa Lis Art Nouveau and Art Deco Museum in Salamanca) were purely decorative.

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