Peter Rath (entrepreneur)
Peter B. Rath (born December 20, 1939 in Vienna ) is an Austrian entrepreneur , trained belt maker , glass artist and author .
Life
School education and entry into the family business
Peter Rath was born on December 20, 1939, the son of Hans Harald Rath (1904–1968) and his wife, who came from England . The father was the owner of the company J. & L. Lobmeyr , which was founded in 1823 by Josef Lobmeyr (1792–1855). In 1855 this Viennese trading house for glassware was bequeathed to Lobmeyr's sons Josef junior and Ludwig (1829-1917). After Ludwig's death in 1917, it was inherited by his nephew Stefan Rath (1876–1960), who transferred it to Hans Harald Rath while he was still alive. During the Second World War, the family and the workshops, which were temporarily run under Master Gustav Svoboda, moved to the Swarovski plant in Wattens . Together with his brother Harald (* 1938), who was born in England , he attended school in England for two years after the end of the war. In 1950 he joined the Jesuit college in Kalksburg and then attended the secondary school Radetzkystraße in the third district of Vienna, Landstraße . After graduating from high school in 1958, Rath began an apprenticeship as a belt worker and subsequently became managing director of the Lobmeyr workshop, which had returned to Vienna after the end of the war. At this time, Rath was also a successful mountaineer , among other things from 1961 to 1971 he single-handedly traversed the Eastern Alpine ridge and climbed over one hundred three-thousanders .
Large orders during the Cold War
In 1966, Rath worked in the company's old workshop on Pfeilgasse in Josefstadt on the production of a chandelier for the Metropolitan Opera in New York City , which was produced according to his father's designs. The order for the Metropolitan Opera ( Met for short ) was later described not as the largest, but certainly as the company's most important order in recent history. On the occasion of the move into a new building in Lincoln Center , the Austrian government gave the Met 23 these chandeliers in various sizes. The 16-flame chandeliers, made of gold and silver and studded with Swarovski crystals, were installed in the lobby and the auditorium of the Met. During cleaning work in the Met, the chandeliers installed in the lobby were completely dismantled in 2008 and brought to Europe . A few years later, the twelve other chandeliers in the opera's auditorium had a mechanical defect. The lamps, also known as Sputnik because of their spatiotemporal design , have been working again since September 2016 . Since then, the Met has been selling exact replicas of the lamps through its shop, with prices ranging from $ 19,000 for a 24-inch (61 cm) chandelier to $ 83,000 for a 63-inch (160 cm) chandelier. The mead chandelier laid the foundation for an entire era of designs.
After his father had a fatal accident in 1968, Peter Rath took over management of the company with his brothers Harald and Stefan in the same year . While brother Harald was primarily responsible for the management of the glazing department and the table culture, Peter and Stefan took care of the manufacture of the lighting fixtures. After the death of his father, Peter Rath passed the master's examination in the belt trade and also took over the commission for chandeliers in the opera house of the Washington National Opera in the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC The giant chandelier with 12,000 Crystals, 130 “crystal explosions” and 2,000 lightbulbs were installed on the ceiling in the opera's auditorium. It was also a gift from the Austrian government. Around the same time, Rath created the equally huge chandelier for the conference room at the Moscow Kremlin based on his own designs . In 1970 he married Beate (née Meinl), with whom he had two children, Leonid (* 1971) and Louise (* 1973). The family moved to Vienna-Hietzing and spent the summers in Engelstein in Lower Austria . While Leonid later joined the company, Louise is now (as of 2021) primarily an artist, especially in the area of screen printing .
Takeover of Jos. Zahn & Co. and further expansion of the company
In 1972 the brothers took over the chandelier manufacturer Jos, which was founded in 1780 . Zahn & Co. , based at Salesianergasse 9, in the old building in which the Austrian Society for Religious Orders was founded in 1990 . A year later, on the occasion of the company's 150th anniversary, the so-called meeting point L was set up according to a design by the architect Karl Mang, and with it an extension of the parent company at Kärntner Strasse 26 in downtown Vienna . Together with Zdeněk Šťáhlavský and Jindra Beranek , Rath set up Austria's first studio glass oven in Stoob in the 1970s . Together with the American native Jack Ink (* 1944), the glass studio was opened in the Franzensbad in Baden near Vienna in 1976 . The Ohio- born glassblower Jack Ink took over the management of the glass studio, which was closed again in 1986 after ten years. In 1980, Rath was involved in the ninth general assembly of the World Crafts Council and the seventh general assembly of the World Crafts Council Europe in Vienna, which took place during the same meeting.
Also in the 1980s, chandeliers were made for the Heinz Hall for the Performing Arts in Pittsburgh , again for Moscow , for the Snagov community near Bucharest or for Sofia, as well as initial explorations in the Arab countries . During this time, in cooperation with Gimtex and Teich Aluminum, the first royal palace lighting was created for Saudi Arabia , partly in the new Arabic style with painted glass vases. Another major order in the Arab region was completed in 1987 with the delivery of the entire lighting for the Prophet's Mosque in Medina , with 120 chandeliers. Under Rath's direction, prototypes were then created for the huge extensions of the mosques in Mecca ( al-Harām mosque ) and Medina (Prophet's Mosque), which together with and for the Society for Austrian-Arab Relations (GÖAB), at that time still the Society for the Initiation of Arabs Relationships ( GAAB ). After the collapse of the Arab market as a result of the First Gulf War , Rath withdrew to Vienna after the war ended in 1991. From here, however, he supplied palaces in Brunei that same year . He also created the lighting for the Jame '-' Asr-Hassanil-Bolkiah Mosque , which opened in 1994 after six years of construction.
Withdrawal from the management of J. & L. Lobmeyr and relocation to Northern Bohemia
After J. & L. Lobmeyr opened a lighting studio on the Kärntner Ring in 1992, Peter Rath retired from the management in 1993 at the age of 54 and founded the Steinschönau GesmbH glass workshop in Vienna and, together with his wife Beate, the Sklářský atelier Kamenický Šenov, Petr Rath sro in the north Bohemian town of Kamenický Šenov ( Ger . Steinschönau ). It was there in 1996 that the International Glass Engraving Symposium was founded , which he participated in five biennials. Through his studios he continued to work for the Lobmeyer company, but also delivered work to other customers such as Christian Dior , the Austrian workshops and customers in the United States , Japan , Mexico and the Netherlands . In 1995, Rath had developed copies of early glass arm chandeliers in collaboration with Käthe Klappenbach . This resulted orders for Rheinsberg Castle , Plön Castle or Schloss Meseberg , the guesthouse of the German Federal Government. Furthermore, curtain copies were made for chandeliers in Potsdam and for the Bavarian administration of the state palaces, gardens and lakes in Nymphenburg Palace .
In 1997, Rath began to process the archives of Josef Holey's writings and photos that he had taken over, arranging the photos that were often not labeled and not dated. In 2000, together with Helena Koenigsmarková , Käthe Klappenbach and representatives from seven countries, he founded the European Luster Research Society “Light & Glass” in Steinschönau, which is now an important platform for chandelier research. Together with František Janák and Amy Brabender-Hughes , he was involved in the rescue of the Jílek glassworks founded in 1905 and the Střední uměleckoprůmyslová škola sklářská Kamenický Šenov , the oldest glass school in Steinschönau, founded in 1856 . Furthermore, Rath took part in the summer academy led by Jiří Harcuba for many years . In 2002, Rath, who manages the archive of the Lobmeyr company, published the book Lobmeyr 1823 - Helles Glas und Klares Licht aus Wien . Under Rath's direction, 40 copies of the large, multi-part, colored glass vases were made for the Stibadium in the rose garden of Sanssouci Palace in Potsdam, which were delivered in 2008.
Retired since 2008
In the same year, at the age of 68, he caused a stir when, at the end of his professional career, he walked from Steinschönau to Vienna with a wheelbarrow full of glass, which corresponds to a distance of over 530 kilometers. With this he set out in the footsteps of Georg Franz Kreybich, a glassblower born in Steinschönau in 1661, who completed this route at the age of 21, as well as countless other Bohemian glass artists who covered this route in the hundreds of years before Rath. The Sklářský atelier Kamenický Šenov, Petr Rath sro he handed short of Petra Sindelarova (Petra Sindelar, now married Matela) from Prague , who had also grown up in Austria and the glass studio since then continues (as of 2021).
After he officially retired, from 2010 he primarily took care of the Lobmeyer company archive , which is owned by the three Rath brothers. In 2013 he renovated the old hammer forge at Engelstein Castle , which has belonged to his wife's family since the 1960s. In the years 2015-2018 he worked out the manuscript for the book Furniture of the skies , the 2020 German and in the same year under the title Furniture in the Air on English about the publisher Library of the province appeared. According to Rath, it was “his attempt to close a shameful gap in the history of glass, also from his point of view as a Viennese master craftsman”. Rath also announced that "he would like to exhort curators in castles and museums to finally research and describe their chandeliers and highlight them in their object and exhibition catalogs." Also in 2020, Rath donated numerous works of art by important glass artists to the Rollett Museum in Baden. In December 2019 he took part in a dialogue tour on the subject of the Cold War and architecture. Contribution to the democratization of Austria after 1945 in the Architekturzentrum Wien , since he had supplied the opera in Washington, DC at the time of the Cold War and the Kremlin in Moscow almost at the same time, which meant that he had not gone completely unnoticed by the secret service.
Rath is also a supporter of the Eliaska project and the designs by the architect Tereza Šváchová (* 1989) for the construction of the first large chandelier museum in the old factory building of the Elias Palme company in Steinschönau , which has been vacant for decades and is now a listed building .
Today (as of 2021) the company J. & L. Lobmeyr is managed in the sixth generation by his son Leonid and his cousins Andreas (son of Harald) and Johannes (son of Stefan). Initially he gave his son ten percent and then another eighty percent of his company shares.
Literary works (selection)
- 2002: Lobmeyr 1823 - Bright glass and clear light from Vienna
- 2020: Möbel der Lüfte (in German) and Furniture in the Air (in English)
Web links
- Peter Rath on the official website of the Verlag Bibliothek der Provinz
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Harald Rath on club-carriere.com, accessed on January 6, 2021
- ↑ a b Metropolitan on J. & L. Lobmeyr's official website , accessed January 6, 2021
- ↑ a b c d e f For $ 83,000, Install Stars from the Met Opera in Your Home , accessed January 6, 2021
- ^ Opera House Chandelier , accessed January 6, 2021
- ^ Official website of Louise Rath , accessed on January 6, 2021
- ↑ Josef Zahn (& Co) is 222 years old on February 22, 2002 at 12 p.m. , accessed on January 6, 2021
- ↑ Pioneers of studio glass - the glass studio in Franzensbad (1976-1986) , accessed on January 6, 2021
- ↑ a b Memory of the glass studio in Franzensbad 1976 to 1986 - Fragile donation to the city of Baden , accessed on January 6, 2021
- ↑ a b With the wheelbarrow to Vienna , accessed on January 6, 2021
- ↑ With a wheelbarrow full of glass from Northern Bohemia to Vienna , accessed on January 6, 2021
- ↑ Engelstein Castle on burgen-austria.com, accessed on January 6, 2021
- ↑ Dialogue tour - Cold War and Architecture , accessed on January 6, 2021
- ↑ Conversion of a former chandelier factory on the official website of Tereza Šváchová (English), accessed on January 6, 2021
- ↑ ELIASKA - A UTOPIAN PROJECT? / ELIASKA - A UTOPIA PROJECT? (English / German), accessed on January 6, 2021
- ↑ ELIASKA PROJECT (English / German), accessed on January 6, 2021
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Rath, Peter |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Rath, Peter B. (full name) |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | Austrian entrepreneur, glass artist and author |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 20, 1939 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Vienna , Austria |