Wiener Werkstätte and the Werkbund
In Vienna lines became straight and surfaces chequered; in Germany artists and industrial companies joined forces to make good design out of factory goods.
In 1897 a group of young artists and architects left the conservative artists' association in Vienna and formed the Secession. Among them were Gustav Klimt, Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser. Inspired by Mackintosh and Arts and Crafts, Hoffmann and Moser founded the Wiener Werkstätte in 1903 with the banker Fritz Waerndorfer – a workshop for furniture, silver, jewellery, textiles, glass and graphics.
The Wiener Werkstätte's language was geometric: squares, grids, black and white. Silver baskets were made of perforated sheet in a grid pattern, furniture of straight, painted battens. The workshop wanted to unite art and craft in total environments, such as the Palais Stoclet in Brussels, where Hoffmann designed the house and the workshop everything in it.
Germany chose a different path. The Deutscher Werkbund, founded in 1907, brought together artists, architects and industrial companies to raise the quality of German goods. The same year the electricity company AEG hired Peter Behrens, who designed everything from factories and lamps to kettles and the logo. The idea spread: Britain got the Design and Industries Association in 1915, and in Sweden and Denmark the craft societies and the silversmiths took up the thinking.