Tonindustrie Scheibbs
| Tonindustrie Scheibbs - L. Weinbrenner & Cie
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| legal form | Company |
| founding | 1923 |
| resolution | 1933 |
| Seat | Scheibbs , Austria |
| management | Ludwig Weinbrenner, Erwin Salcher (Compagnon), Rudolf Knörlein (until 1924), Friedrich Schmidtchen sen. (from 1924) |
| Number of employees | 55 |
| Branch | Arts , crafts |
The clay industry Scheibbs was a ceramic manufacturer in the interwar years in Scheibbs , with a connection to the Wiener Werkstätte . Like many other ceramic workshops, it went bankrupt due to the recession in the early 1930s. The style is primarily to be assigned to Expressionism , with a tendency towards the grotesque and influenced by Far Eastern and naive art .
history
The clay industry Scheibbs was founded in Scheibbs in 1923 by the Viennese gardener Ludwig Weinbrenner . He was the son of a major Viennese gardener who had his nurseries in Floridsdorf and Strebersdorf . Weinbrenner himself studied at the Technical University of Vienna , but did not graduate, but was culturally interested and artistically gifted and initially became a successful breeder of orchids , cacti , roses and hydrangeas as a Viennese city gardener.
1910–1911 he was invited by the Austrian government on a trip to the Far East - Japan, later China and Sumatra - from where he brought exotic plants, art treasures and curiosities to Austria on the imperial torpedo boat of the kuk navy . At that time, Emperor Franz Joseph I intended to reforest the Dalmatian Karst , which had been created by the deforestation of the Venetians over the centuries, in which the Japanese were leading.
After the death of his wife in 1916 and disagreements within the family, Weinbrenner moved to Scheibbs with his second wife, whom he married in 1919. There he bought the Scheibbsbachhof estate from an acquaintance next to the Scheibbs hospital , where he set up a nursery with a Japanese garden and tea house and exhibited many Asian curiosities, including a samurai sword , ivory work, silk paintings and pieces of Japanese armor .
Weinbrenner ran an open house, he kept a huzi , a Hucul horse that he harnessed to his carriage, and often invited the neighboring hospital doctors to cut game with dissection utensils. He kept chickens and pigs, delivered eggs to Vienna hotels by train, made jam and distilled liqueurs. All of this in addition to his work as a gardener, where he grew roses, orchids, gladioli and hydrangeas.
On his property, a slope that has been called Laymberg for centuries - Laim is an old name for loam, clay - he also discovered a small clay deposit and consequently founded a factory. Weinbrenner began with the Wiener Werkstätten artist and later head of Gmundner Ceramics Rudolf Knörlein as plant manager and with the sisters Elisabeth and Adelgunde Krippel , both graduated students of Michael Powolny , to set up an initially provisional ceramic art production on the area of his own nursery.
Soon he moved to the building of the axle and soft cast factory Gaißmayer & Schürhagl in Scheibbs-Heuberg on both sides of the river Erlauf, which had become vacant due to bankruptcy, and trained around fifty unemployed metal workers as ceramic workers. As the clay deposits were low and of moderate quality, clay soon had to be imported from Germany.
Through these first employees and through his good contacts to Powolny and the other ceramic artists active in Vienna, Weinbrenner came into contact with Wiener Werkstätte (WW), which ran its own ceramic workshop in Vienna. The result was a series of objects that are marked with the Scheibbs stamp and that of the Wiener Werkstätte. So far it has not been possible to clarify whether they were manufactured in Scheibbs for the WW or should be sold through the WW, or whether the WW in Scheibbs had its own designs made. Such connections of the WW also existed among others with Gmunden.
The company quickly grew to a considerable size, with over eighty percent of its production going for export. All European countries, but mainly North and South America, from where our own buyers came, ordered and paid in advance, were supplied. The company even had its own wood wool and box production facility for shipping .
From the beginning, Weinbrenner produced for his nurseries in his own interest. In the production of pottery, garden utensils, pots , bonsai and cactus pots, jardiniers and vases of all kinds took up a large part. Even the simplest earthenware was artistically elaborately designed and made of high quality. Weinbrenner's love for Far Eastern culture, in particular for Chinese and Japanese garden design, which he had got to know during several trips to the Far East (Japan, China, Sumatra ), was also clearly reflected. It had plaster molds made of some of the Far Eastern pots he had brought with him from Asia and these pots went into series. The imprints were made so precisely that even the original Asian characters were retained on the bottom of the vessel and found on the new Scheibbs pots.
Knörlein and the Krippel sisters followed as ceramic artists Hilde Heger and Helene Dörr . With them came an even stronger influence of the Wiener Werkstätte after Scheibbs. Like Rudolf Knörlein, both had learned or practiced with Vally Wieselthier , the most important ceramic artist in Vienna in the 1920s. Extraordinary, expressive and bizarre pottery emerged. Heger was in Scheibbs from 1925–1927, Dörr from 1924–26.
The earthenware production was located between the right bank of the river and the street in one of the former Gaißmayer & Schürhagl workshops. A kind of conveyor belt brought the blanks along the wooden bridge to the kiln over the Erlauf. It had its own printed catalog of goods, which contained a wide variety of stoneware items , from food, coffee and tea services to decorative plates, vases, dolls' dishes and sanitary ware. This stoneware production was in contrast to the art ceramics on the left bank of the Erlauf, in design and decor this was based in many cases on existing models such as Wilhelmsburg ceramics or Villeroy & Boch , but there were also artful designs by Josef Hoffmann in the late Art Nouveau .
In 1926, the Scheibbs city coat of arms was made by Johann and Alois Illek for the second city elevation and was a gift from the clay industry to the city of Scheibbs. The letter of arms from 1537 served as a template.
After Black Friday , the banking and stock market crash in the USA in 1929, business in America came to an abrupt end and Austria was ruled by poverty and unemployment. Weinbrenner had to fire all artists and all expensive professionals. The executor was a permanent guest, the company could no longer be kept, in 1933 it was closed after the company's bankruptcy and personal difficulties that arose for the founder, who had emigrated to Paraguay via Portugal in 1932 and left his wife and children behind. The reason for this panic behavior was probably the fear of a trial for negligent Krida .
His property was auctioned, only the company was officially his two children Martha and Theo, but was under receivership . In 1933, Villeroy & Boch was the owner for a short time . The Scheibbsbachhof was bought at auction by Henriette Stoyanoff, wife of the Bulgarian ambassador to Vienna at the time, who mysteriously died on New Year's Eve 1933. The grounds of the nursery were parceled out and a nursery was established there again in the 1960s. Weinbrenner's children had to work on a chicken farm in Germany, his wife got a divorce and went back to Vienna.
Ludwig Weinbrenner kept reporting back from exile by mail, but never came back to Europe. He took part as a cook in an expedition and hired himself as a troop cook in the war between Paraguay and Bolivia . He ran an import-export company with an Italian partner, which ran well, but was abruptly ended by World War II. With a Spanish-speaking partner, he founded a sound company that ended in bankruptcy. In Asunción he painted pictures and portraits and worked as an accountant in a hotel. Weinbrenner married a third time in 1934 and died impoverished of cancer in 1966.
production
Ludwig Weinbrenner ran an open, spacious house in Scheibbs and kept in contact with all ceramic experts and artists of his time. Both the already famous, established ceramists such as Michael Powolny, Franz Schleiß and Josef Hoffmann , as well as the young, often still studying artists, gladly and repeatedly came to Scheibbs. Josef Hoffmann, who was often a private guest in Gresten and also liked to visit Scheibbs on this occasion, came up with many designs for stoneware production , Franz Schleiß repeatedly made glaze samples.
The young Gudrun Baudisch was a welcome guest as early as 1924, and she was responsible for the original designs of the expressive women's heads that were later produced for the Wiener Werkstätte. Some designs suggest Kitty Rix, the young artists all knew each other well and were under the same artistic influences. Also, Walter Bosse was a few months in Scheibbs and has left its mark here.
A specialty of the clay industry Scheibbs were the various glazes on one and the same model. At the beginning, there were usually only small quantities of glazes in stock, the colors that were available were processed and could be used up the next day, then other colors were used again. This need became a virtue and a principle for the first ten years. Whenever possible, no model was glazed like the other, which is of particular interest to collectors today.
The perforated walls of Scheibbs objects were not only known from porcelain , they also appear in ceramics, for example on joke mugs made by stoneware . It became a stylistic device of the early 20th century, especially with Josef Hoffmann, Dagobert Peche and Vally Wieselthier. The production was relatively complex, it also happened that surfaces were not cut out, so that the webs are only available as a decorative element.
The diverse production of plates, bowls and jugs was based on the traditional and down-to-earth pottery tradition, but the design was often very unusual. In addition to the depiction of farmers, hunters and other rural scenes, there are many very abstract or alienated depictions, often with fleeting lines, as if thrown away, playful and carefree. The wild, powerful forms often have a sculptural character.
Another special feature of Scheibbs' clay industry were the many creations of figural ceramics. For the most part, the animal figures were given a function: ashtrays, carriers of cactus pots, toothpick or cigarette containers, larger ones were often lamp bases for electric table lamps, some animal depictions were very humorous. Here, too, the same design was glazed in different colors. Several influences can be seen in the depictions of animals: the deer that turns around and looks could have come from Gudrun Baudisch.
Others, like a rabbit with a cactus pot on its back and the carrying bag based on the Italian model, come from Walter Bosse. Still others are attributed to Kitty Rix. At first glance, many animal figures appear bumbling and primitive, but in their entirety the viewer soon becomes aware of the genuinely ingenious simplification and witty exaggeration, such as with small dogs, pelicans , llamas or cats with potties on their backs.
Almost all designs for candlesticks come from Hilde Heger and were mainly intended for the American market, so the candle nozzles are also larger than usual in Europe because the American candles had a larger diameter. Some of the candle holders were also designed as lamp bases, as shown by the preserved assemblies or openings for cables.
Electric light was already very common in the 1920s, Scheibbs was the first place in the monarchy to have electric street lighting, but electric power and lighting were still a recent achievement in technology and something special. That is why electrical lighting fixtures, such as the lamp bases of table lamps, are particularly elaborate.
Jugs were also made for the Brammer Salon Orchestra , which was led by the father and uncle of the painter Josef Bramer in the 1920s.
After 1928, the influence of the Viennese artists receded significantly and the goods took on a more provincial character. The glazes and the red clay remained unchanged, the toppings became more and more down-to-earth or alpine. After the Viennese artists left the spontaneous, constantly changing and still so typical painting, came to an end. The goods were glazed freely as best one could, without great artistic pretensions, or strictly adhered to templates.
Alexander Mathé now provided such templates, who was now the only remaining artist to develop better. A final flourishing of the period of Scheibb's clay industry resulted in pretty art deco designs by Mathé in 1929–31 , no longer the great art, but in the style of the time, with bright, thoroughly successful color combinations.
Employee
Artistic: Rudolf Knörlein , Elisabeth Krippel, Adelgunde Krippel , Gudrun Baudisch , Walter Bosse , Hilde Heger , Helene Dörr , Alexander Mathé, Ria Kratzig, Josef Hoffmann , Franz Schleiß , Michael Powolny , Elisabeth Lachnit, Lotte Calm
Craftsmanship: Richard and Friedrich Schmidtchen jun., Johann and Alois Illek, Florian Steinkellner, Franz Dorninger
Succession
After the bankruptcy in 1933 and the short-term owners Villeroy & Boch and the Bulgarian ambassador's wife Henriette Stoyanoff, who suddenly died on New Year's Eve 1933, the three business partners Ribal, Ettl and König leased the business from the administration in 1934 and tried their hand at the production of fire-resistant dishes and Art ceramics as Friedrich Ribal Tonindustrie Scheibbs brand . The attempt was unsuccessful. Among other things, busts of Dollfuss as "heroic chancellors" were made in large numbers and found in many rural corners of God . At the same time Alexandra (Xandi) Gütersloh, daughter of Albert Paris Gütersloh , was brought to Scheibbs. It is not known whether she modeled for the operation. The company was completely shut down from 1935-37.
1937 leased the former lathe operator , semi-skilled by Weinbrenner and now unemployed ceramist Franz Schmid under court receivership company presented the court and began to resume operations with some former employees for their own account. First old models were new, but cheaper in design and glaze, during the Second World War cups and dishes were made for hospitals and homes, after the war cheap dinnerware (porcelain) and slowly decorative ceramics again. Alexander Mathé also made many glaze suggestions for the restart in 1937 for the new edition of old work numbers and, to a modest extent, designs for figural ceramics, the production of which, however, was soon stopped when the war broke out. The successor company, which was re-established in 1937, never reached the quality of the first ten years, but produced good art ceramics in the style of the time. From 1937–47, some old models were used, which were glazed more easily or cheaply, and soon Almrausch, edelweiss and gentian and fruit toppings in many variations adorned bowls, vases and bowls that differed from other alpine manufacturers only by the luminous glaze. From 1945 onwards there was no more red clay, the similarity with the folk ceramics Mürzzuschlag is particularly striking.
Due to the currency reform in 1947, the company was free of debt and Theo Weinbrenner, son of the founder, took over his father's company under the title Keramik-Weinbrenner-Scheibbs (KWS) , at this time third-party designs were also adopted, such as the design of a black elephant planter from the Viennese Keramikers Kocis, which was extremely popular from the mid-1950s and produced by the thousands. Weinbrenner managed the company until 1957, followed by his sister Martha Edenberger as director. She was economically successful, but still looked for an exit from the ceramics business.
She found it in 1964 in Wolf Dieter Miessl, a young Stoob graduate. Miessl initially leased, but soon bought the Scheibbser ceramics and produced ceramics in the style of old pottery with the Malhorn and comb patterns typical of Stoob . The factory has been run by the Lebenshilfe association as a protected workshop since 1987 - since 2004 the company has been housed in a new, separate building closer to the city center; the Scheibbs ceramics museum has been located in the historic company premises since 2007 .
Scheibbs Ceramic Museum
Since 2007 the Scheibbs Ceramics Museum has shown around 1500 exhibits from the Hans Hagen Hottenroth collection from the production of the Scheibbs clay industry, the successor company Scheibbser Keramik, as well as earlier examples from the history of ceramics. In addition to this permanent exhibition, there are constantly changing exhibitions on productions by other national and international manufacturers.
literature
- Hans Hagen Hottenroth: Tonindustrie Scheibbs 1923–1933, Scheibbser Keramik 1937. Scheibbs 1994, self-published.
- Hans Hagen Hottenroth: Ceramic Museum Scheibs - an introduction and overview of the museum. Scheibbs 2007.
- Johanna and Hans Hagen Hottenroth: The Radstadt (art) ceramics. (Self-published 2002).
- Erwin Scheikl: Volkskeramik Mürzzuschlag. Mürzzuschlag 2003.
Web links
Coordinates: 48 ° 0 ′ 57.4 " N , 15 ° 9 ′ 30.2" E