Ferdinand Richard Wilm

Ferdinand Richard Wilm (born October 11, 1880 in Berlin ; † October 9, 1971 in Hamburg ) was a German jeweler .

Live and act

Ferdinand Richard Wilm completed a bank apprenticeship from 1899 to 1903 and studied at the Hanau Drawing Academy from 1903 to 1904 . He then lived for several years in London and New York . Then he went back to Berlin. His ancestors ran a jewelry store founded by Gottfried Ludewig Wilm in 1767, which his grandfather Hermann Julius Wilm (1812–1907) and father Johann Paul Friedrich Wilm (1840–1923) had continued.

In Berlin, Friedrich Richard Wilm, like his brother Johann David, received shares in his father's jewelry store in 1911, which operated under the name of HJ Wilm and rose to the position of imperial court jeweler a year later. After his father died in 1923, Wilm acquired the silversmiths Paul Teige and J. Godet & Son and expanded them into a contemporary goldsmith's workshop. Since he did not receive any further commissions from aristocratic circles after the end of the First World War , Wilms offered silver, timeless and modern cutlery with excellent craftsmanship, with which he wanted to reach larger groups of bourgeois customers.

Wilm held many offices in professional associations. From 1919 to 1926 he was a member of the board of directors of the Reich Association of German Jewelers, Gold- and Silversmiths. In 1932, together with Peter Behrens and Wilhelm Waetzoldt , he founded the German Society for Goldsmithing , which still exists today and which organized competitions for artists and helped blacksmithing to gain more presence in exhibitions. Wilm organized many exhibitions, wrote himself and knew how to successfully advertise the industry. He received gold medals at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1937 and the Milan Triennial in 1940. Hermann Göring ordered splendid silver, honor boxes and marshal's baton from the jeweler, which at the time enhanced Wilm's reputation.

After the end of the Second World War , Wilm moved the company headquarters to Aumühle in 1945 . Three years later, HJ Wilm moved to Hamburg in a shop at Ballindamm number 8, elegantly designed by the architects Tinneberg and vom Berg . The jeweler made silver tableware and jewelery in particular, and created honorary prizes and special orders for council silver from cities such as Berlin , Pforzheim , and Düsseldorf , Hamburg or Hanau . Wilm created many pieces in the range several times, but also designed new, contemporary pieces. For custom-made products, he used the services of artisans such as the silversmith Erwin Winkler or Vera Crodel-Steckner-von Claer. In 1967 Wilm transferred the company to his son Renatus (1927–1998), who ran it independently and closed the company in 1996. His son Marc Wilm (* 1962) founded the company on a smaller scale in 1997.

Works

Ferdinand Richard Wilm's jewelry, which he made in Berlin and Hamburg, can be found in several museums. These include the applied arts museums in Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Hanover and Cologne. In addition to the Bröhan Museum , the Hanau Historical Museum and the New Munich Collection , Haus Doorn also shows works by HJ Wilm . In the Museum of Arts and Crafts there are about 6000 pages with drafts for tableware and jewelry. The Hanauer Gesellschaft für Goldschmiedekunst also archives documents on its history during the time of Ferdinand Richard Wilms.

literature

• Stephan Demmrich: HJ Wilm: German silver design in the 20th century , dissertation, Bonn 1997.
• Rüdiger Joppien: Wilm, Ferdinand Richard . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 5 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8353-0640-0 , p. 372-374 .