Women's Work: Maria Likarz-Strauss and Mathilde Flogl

Leaves, 1923
Above design by Maria Likarz-Strauss

Maria Likarz-Strauss was one of the most prolific pattern designers in the Vienna Workshops, but her name is rarely mentioned in books on the subject. She seems to have been influential in her time however. According to Daniel Walker, director of The Textile Museum in Washington DC, “she was the most active textile designer in the workshop [Wiener Werkstätte], with almost 200 designs attributed to her.” Likarz-Strauss had a broad stylistic range that incorporated the stylized floral elements associated with Peche with the formal geometric patterns that originated with Hoffman. Yet, she is most well known for her abstract patterns with infinite repeats, which reflect the international trends that led to the Art Deco Style.

Mathilde Flogl learned design, applied graphic and creative enamelling and was trained under Joseph Hoffmann. She was admitted in 1916 at the Wiener Werkstatte. From 1918 she designed more than 120 textile patterns for the Wiener Werkstatte. She was influenced by Dagobert Peche and Maria Likarz Strauss.

Flowers 1920

Bambi 1925

Caliopsis 1930Above Designs by Mathilde Flogl

Graphic Design of the Wiener Werkstaette

Please check out our related blog on GRAPHIC DESIGN of the workshops.

Wilhelm Jonasch

Study Fragment Entitled "Cobenzl", 1910/11

Silk, plain weave; screen printed

27.3 x 16.2 cm

Study Fragment Entitled "Wiener Wald" (Vienna Woods), 1910/11

Silk, plain weave; screen printed

17.3 x 17.1 cm

New Year Greeting, 1910/11

Lithograph on Paper

8.9x14 cm

Hilda Jesser

Vase, Circa 1925
Glazed painted ceramic
9 1/2" (24.2 cm) high
Executed by the Wiener Werkstätte

Fashion Illustration from Das Leben einer Dame

Hand-colored linoleum print from portfolio of 20 by various artists of the Wiener Werkstätte
11 3/4" x 15 1/2" (29.7 x 39.3 cm)
Private collection

Hilda Jesser

1894–1985

• 1912 attended Vienna School of Applied arts as a "guest student"
• 1914 becomes full time student
• 1915 admitted to Josef Hoffmann's architecture classes
• works for the Wiener Werkstätte, primarily designing fabrics and fashion until 1922

Images courtesy of Galerie St. Etienne

Textiles of the Weiner Werkstatte by Angela Volker 1910-1932

This text by Angela Volker (Thames & Hudson 2004) is an incredibly comprehensive resource on the subject of the Wiener Werkstatte's Textile work.

Much of it is available for view (though with poor quality images and no accreditation) here.

It is available for purchase here.

Joseph Hoffman Designs 1928-29

Dagobert Peche

Dagobert Peche studied in Vienna between 1908 and 1911. Starting with mechanical engineering at the Technical Institute, he switched to the Akademie der Bildenden Künste, where he studied architecture. His formal language at first revealed Baroque and Rococo influences, but he was also interested in standardizing forms and the new possibilities afforded by industrial mass production of crafts objects. Dagobert Peche joined the Wiener Werkstätte in 1915. The Wiener Werkstätte had been founded in 1903 by Josef Hoffmann, Koloman Moser, and the banker Fritz Wärndorfer. As one of its most creative exponents, Peche designed some three thousand objects, including china, furniture, book bindings, jewelry, fashions, textiles, and even Christmas tree decorations.

Dagobert Peche's textiles stood in stark contrast to many of the bold, geometric prints from the Werstatte, his work being more rounded and eclectic. Many of his prints repeat in an offset, slanting motion and feature natural elements interpreted with decorative, curvy line work. His textiles work had an effect on the way Peche saw mass-produced ornament, as shown in his black and gold piece Cabinet in which he laid perfectly offset gold medallions on the face of the furniture piece, cutting of the repeat at the edges of the cabinet to create the illusion that the pattern might extend and repeat infinitely outwards. While Peche's work was greatly ornamental, he was intrigued by the phenomenon of repeated pattern.

Peche's patterns are recognized for their distinctive style that typically features the delicate representation of naturalistic forms, sometimes in large-scale repeats, with an emphasis on fine-line drawing.

Dagobert Peche, Cabinet, 1918