Herter Brothers
| Herter Brothers | |
|---|---|
| legal form | partnership |
| founding | 1864 |
| resolution | 1906 |
| Seat | New York City , United States |
| management | Gustave Herter, Christian Herter |
| Branch | Interior design |
Herter Brothers was a 1864 to 1906 in New York City existing company produced, the quality furniture and interiors for private homes and public facilities. The owners were the German-born half-brothers Gustave (Gustav) and Christian Herter from Stuttgart .
history
The older brother Gustave came to the United States during the revolution of 1848 and began to work there in his traditional profession as a wood carver in the furniture industry. In 1853 he showed an oak sideboard in an exhibition in New York's Crystal Palace , which made him known to the general public for the first time and formed the basis of his own company. A few years later he already employed a hundred people.
The developments at the beginning of the second half of the 19th century in the USA suited him: The tendency to set up their own libraries and galleries at home led to new needs for furniture buyers. One of Gustave Herter's earliest known works met these wishes: an exhibition or presentation table for valuable books and works of art, richly decorated with carvings. The nouveau riche of Victorian America became Herter's primary target group. In 1864 Gustave and Christian Herter, who had also come to the USA around 1860, merged to form the company Herter Brothers .
Customers and factories
In 1860 Gustave Herter furnished the property of the hotel baron Ruggles S. Morse . Other customers of the up-and-coming company were John Pierpont Morgan , LeGrand Lockwood , the banking and railroad tycoon who had several rooms in his country house in Norwalk completely furnished by Herter Brothers, Mary Frances Sherwood Hopkins Searles and Milton Latham . This investor and politician bought Thurlow Lodge in Menlo Park , California . In the music room of this building, there was probably the largest piece of furniture that was ever produced on the American continent - a console from the Herter Brothers house. It bears testimony to the style that was mainly propagated by Christian Herter: a wealth of materials and a combination of numerous artistic styles such as carving, painting, etc. led to effects that were more reminiscent of painting than furniture making. The general appreciation of handicrafts as well as exotic materials and art forms in the 1870s and 1880s corresponded exactly to this tendency.
Christian Herter was one of the first designers in America to adopt features of Japanese art even before it became a general fashion with the Philadelphia Exhibition of the Century . One of the first customers to order furnishings in this new style from Herter was insurance magnate James Goodwin in Hartford, Connecticut . His eclectic country house Woodlands from 1874 was furnished in Anglo-Japanese style. In 1940 the house was demolished; only a small part of the original furnishings remained in Hartford's Wadsworth Atheneum .
One of the most impressive examples of the work of the Herter Brothers was the residence of William Henry Vanderbilt , which was built in 1879 at Fifth Avenue and 55th Street in New York. Except for the color design of the facades, the company had a free hand with this building.
In 1870 Gustave Herter retired from professional life to return to Germany. Christian Herter retired from the company in 1883 and died that same year. The company had to give up its monopoly position in the following years, but was still very successful. Apparently the Herter Brothers had met the taste of the time. A report about the company from 1995 reads: “[…] the sheer audacity of building bigger and bolder forms in wood - and every other material under the sun - make Herter Brothers the premier innovators in furniture design, in an age that took its furniture very seriously. "
Exhibitions
Works by the Herter Brothers were shown in 1995 in a joint exhibition between the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original dated December 7, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
