Pair of Stools, Model No. 413, designed circa 1900

This model of stool (model no. 413) was first produced by Jacob and Josef Kohn in 1901 for the Winter Exhibition of the Imperial and Royal Austrian Museum of Art and Industry of the same year. An armchair of this series was also displayed and illustrated in the 1904 supplement. The 1906 J. & J. Kohn catalogue included the armchair, sofa, stool and a small table of this series, however, it did not include the corner sofa which had been on display at the 1904 Saint Louis Exposition.

The design is attributed to Koloman Moser with likenesses found in attributes such as the circular feet executed in either brass or wood, a similar feature used in the vitrine (model nos. 1304, 3140) displayed in the same 1901 Winter Exhibition. The 1905-1906 publication of the Hohe Warte magazine illustrates this model as after Professor Josef Hoffmann’s new system of design. In 1899, Hoffmann was appointed as a professor at Vienna’s Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Applied Arts) and in 1900 he began designing homes for an artists’ colony in Vienna’s suburb of Hohe Warte, including a home for Moser. It was with this commission that he began to pursue Gesamtkunstwerk, which unified various art forms, such as architecture and design, to achieve the ideal total work of art.

The present stools are a product of these values of craftsmanship, attention to detail, and modern aesthetics, that would go on to lay the foundation for the Wiener Werkstätte, a collaborative association for artists and artisans, founded by Hoffmann and Moser in 1903.