Jakob Julius Scharvogel

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jakob Julius Scharvogel (born April 3, 1854 in Mainz , † January 30, 1938 in Munich ) was a German ceramist .

Life

Jakob Julius Scharvogel was born on April 3, 1854 in the house at Flachsmarktstrasse 21 in Mainz. He attended the business school there , which was run by his father. On the initiative of his parents, he went to the industrial school in Zurich in 1868 . Scharvogel returned after just one year and went to Darmstadt to complete a four-semester degree in mathematics, chemistry and physics at the newly founded polytechnic school .

During a visit to the World Exhibition in Paris in 1878 , he was particularly fascinated by the work of Japanese potters with their fired ceramics. This influence would later be found in Scharvogel's artistic work. Some time later he moved to London . After he had dealt with ceramic objects in the South Kensington Museum (today: Victoria & Albert Museum ), founded in 1852 , he began to work as an artist for the first time.

Scharvogel succeeded in combining commercial training with his interest in ceramics when he accepted a position as a factory engineer and deputy director of the Villeroy & Boch mosaic factory in Mettlach in 1883 . From 1885, the 31-year-old headed the company's sales center for Central Germany , based in Leipzig .

In the same year he married Sophie Vohsen from Mainz, with whom he had two daughters.

During his years in Mettlach and Leipzig, the artist familiarized himself with the manufacturing process for ceramic materials. After 15 years at Villeroy & Boch, Scharvogel wanted to develop artistically and moved to Munich with his family. In Sendlinger Oberfeld, Scharvogel founded the Munich art pottery , in which he developed a large range over time - based on the model of Japanese pottery: vases, lights, lamps and jugs were part of it, as well as a little figurative ceramics. Contacts were quickly made with the United Workshops for Art in Crafts, founded in 1898 . Some of the artists also worked at Scharvogel, for example Ludwig Habich , Walter Magnussen and Paul Haustein , with whom he produced new series of tiles decorated with artistic ornaments. The decisive factor is the new technique in which Scharvogel created the colorful glazed pottery with the help of metal oxides. This sniper fire - stoneware he sold under the name "Scharvogel stoneware".

Germany-wide exhibitions also brought Scharvogel stoneware to Darmstadt for the exhibition of the Darmstadt artists' colony in 1901. There, his products and tiles were in the villas "Haus Glückert" and "Haus Habich" built by Joseph Maria Olbrich and in Olbrich's own house on the To see Mathildenhöhe . In 1902 Scharvogel's employee, Haustein, was appointed to the artists' colony, where he developed furniture and equipment for the exhibition houses until the second exhibition in 1904, in which products from Scharvogel's workshops were also occasionally found.

At the same time, Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig planned to set up a ceramic factory in Darmstadt . Since Scharvogel had achieved some fame through the exhibitions on the Mathildenhöhe in Darmstadt, the Munich resident was to be entrusted with the management of the Grand Ducal Ceramic Manufactory . In April 1904, Scharvogel presented a concept that included three main production areas: garden decorations , building terracotta and interior decorations. Two years later, the manufacture in Darmstadt started operations and mainly expanded the tile and tile production area.

For his new position in Darmstadt, Scharvogel gave up his presidency of the Munich Association for Applied Arts in 1905 , which he had held since 1903. As a farewell, he received the Order of Merit from St. Michael IV Class for his services to the Bavarian arts and crafts. In the same year, the artist also sold his Munich factory to move to Darmstadt, where the Grand Ducal Ceramic Factory was built in the Bessungen district , Noackstrasse 7/9.

The first big order from the new manufactory was to equip the spa facility at the Sprudelhof in Bad Nauheim with building ceramics. Great hopes were placed in the Scharvogel ceramics, which should be resistant to stone damage. In the meantime, the manufactory had not only developed glazed stone slabs for interior design, but also robust stoneware tiles for the facade cladding. Scharvogel thus propagated his weatherproof ceramics from 1907 .

Scharvogel was one of the founding members of the German Werkbund in 1907 .

The economic success of the manufactory in Darmstadt, managed by Scharvogel, failed to materialize, although its sharp fire tiles and garden terracottas had received a positive response at the Hessian state exhibition in 1908 on Mathildenhöhe and the bathhouses in Bad Nauheim had been decorated with its colorful stoneware tiles. In 1910/1911 he designed the stairwell of the former park hotel on Dieburger Strasse in Darmstadt, which is now the Georg-Christoph-Lichtenberg-Haus, which was acquired by Prince Otto Heinrich zu Schaumburg-Lippe . In 1912 Scharvogel was able to design the “Prince's pavilion” of the Darmstadt main train station, built by the Darmstadt architect Friedrich Pützer, with ceramic tiles.

The economic failure also clouded the relationship with Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig, whereupon Scharvogel asked for his release for health reasons and returned to Munich in 1913 .

From 1915 to 1925 Scharvogel gave lectures on building ceramics at the Technical University of Munich . Since 1918 he was a member of the “Artists' Council” and of the organization of the “ German Trade Show”, which, as an event competing with the 1922 Paris World Exhibition, attracted around 3.5 million visitors to Munich. Not least for this commitment into old age, Scharvogel received an honorary pension from the city of Munich from his 75th birthday.

Jakob Julius Scharvogel died in Munich on January 30, 1938.

literature

personal data
SURNAME Scharvogel, Jakob Julius
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German ceramist
DATE OF BIRTH April 3, 1854
PLACE OF BIRTH Mainz
DATE OF DEATH January 30, 1938
Place of death Munich