Tea service with tray
Not on view
At a moment when Paris, and the rest of Europe, continued to produce historicist styles or more contemporary innovations in the manner of Art Nouveau, the Wiener Werkstätte turned to geometric abstraction and restrained ornament in a gesture toward increasing production of daily wares of exceptionally high artistic and production quality. This tea service is a collaboration between Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser, founders of the workshop. The combination of simple forms ornamented with both precious and common materials continues the bourgeois spirit of Biedermeier design the century before. Carl Otto Czeschka, whose mark is found on the service, worked with stylized floral patterns that indicate his involvement in the floral design of the handles, the flower petal-like tray, and the organic, rounded surface details that suggest vegetal vesicles.
