Tea Water Kettle

Austria played a seminal role in vanguard European design at the beginning of the twentieth century. Founded in 1887, the Viennese firm of Brüder Frank marketed art and utilitarian objects in silver in a variety of styles, including late nineteenth-century historical revivals and French art nouveau. Brüder Frank also turned to the progressive designs associated with glassware, ceramics, metal work, and furniture by such prominent individuals and firms in Vienna as Josef Hoffmann and the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshops), the leaders in Viennese design and production between 1900 and 1930.

The spare aesthetic of this teapot and kettle includes a geometric profile and all-over hammered textured surface embellishment instead of realistic applied ornamentation. Such principles of design are hallmarks of modernist design, most notably taken up in the 1920s by the Bauhaus in Germany, of which there are about a dozen examples of furniture design by two Viennese students of the German design school in the Smart Museum’s collection.