Drawing-room table Direktor Stern
Design 1898 (Wvz. 1322)
Henry van de Velde’s numerous multi-purpose drawing-room, tea and occasional table models were designed to meet the needs of his clients as well as those of his own household. This practical principle also informs the present piece, which the artist modified in details as commissioned. He lived in Berlin and Weimar with this table, which was made somewhat larger than called for by the original design.
The model was commissioned from van de Velde in Berlin by the banker and collector Julius Stern. This commission was an ambitious one comprising the decoration of several large rooms on one floor of a villa in the Tiergarten section and was published several times in trend-setting specialist journals of the day. Prior to the work he did for Karl Ernst Osthaus in Hagen, the designs for the Sterns’ city flat represented the most important and large-scale commission the Belgian received in Germany. Unfortunately, none of the furnishings for the Sterns’ city flat have survived nor has a single one of the numerous other pieces which van de Velde designed in 1912/13 for their country estate at Geltow near Potsdam come down to us.
This handsome piece was made in the artist’s own workshop in Brussels. Tautness of line an tectonics point eloquently to his early carrer. Nevertheless, the overall design has already attained the degree of abstraction which clearly distinguished his ‘New Style’ from the Art Nouveau Zeitgeist while assertively continuing its basic approach.
|
 |
Drawing-room, Director Stern, 1912/13 |
Other exemplars formed part of the furnishings commissioned by the diplomat Alfred von Nostitz and the painter Curt Herrmann. The latter negotiated the commission from the Sterns, who, as collectors, were friends of the painter’s.
This table was always available in polished hardwoods (mahogany, padouk) and this is shown by the rare exemplars to have survived in private collections. No longer in production after 1900, the table is one of the artist’s most elegant models.
|
