Wall Sconce with Crystal Flowers

One of the most respected designer-architects of the interwar and postwar period, Oswald Haerdtl was born in Vienna in 1899. He is best known for his early expressions of modernist design, especially those that contributed to Vienna's famous Kaffeehaus culture, as well as for his collaborations with iconic Austrian architect Josef Hoffmann.

Haerdtl trained as an architect under Oskar Strnad and Josef Frank, graduating in 1921 with the Eitelberger Prize for academic achievement from the University of Applied Arts Vienna. In 1922, Haerdtl took an assistant position with Hoffmann, who became his mentor and later his colleague as they collaborated on many different projects. Haerdtl notably worked with Hoffmann’s team at the Exposition Internationale des Art Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in 1925. While in Paris, he took the opportunity to visit the studios and see the works of his favorite modernists, including Le Corbusier, Jean Lurçat, and André Lurçat, and Fernand Léger.

Returning to Vienna, Haerdtl set up studio at the Werkbundsiedlung in Vienna, a residential project lead by his former teacher Josef Frank and other well known architects, which was intended to be an exemplar of modern living. There, he produced his first solo projects, including the design of several residential and office buildings. His designs were chosen to represent Austria in the world fairs in Brussels in 1935 and in Paris in 1937. In 1935, he also accepted a professorship in architecture from his former teacher Oskar Strnad at his alma mater.

Although criticized for employing Jewish contractors to produce his architectural and design projects following the Anschluss of Austria to Nazi Germany in 1938, Haerdtl continued to work at the university. He avoided military conscription in 1940 after appeals were made on his behalf and he was declared “indispensable” to the university. Still, his studio suffered from the war, so he opened offices in Krakow and Wroclaw, where he designed hotels, offices, and camouflage for industrial equipment.

A Viennese institution, the Kaffeehaus found renewed popularity in the 1950s, Haerdtl found a great deal of work creating café interiors, as well as menus, vases, cutlery, glassware, and tableware. His café chairs were produced by Thonet, which, although also made from bentwood, exhibited a more modern aesthetic than Thonet’s original No.14 Chair. Waitstaff uniforms—deemed an as essential element of the cafés' interior decoration— were often designed by Haerdtl’s wife, Carmela. Haerdtl's famous café interiors include the Café Prükel (1939, completely reconstructed in 1954), Arabia (1950-57), and Hotel Bristol (1948-55).

Haerdtl died suddenly in August 1959. He has since been the subject of two retrospective exhibitions, in 1978 and in 2000, both in Vienna. He was the recipient of many prizes and honors including the Golden Merit Medal of the Republic of Austria (1934 and 1937), the Austrian State Prize for Architecture (1937), and the City of Vienna Prize for Architecture (1948).

Depending on the source you consult, French luxury lighting atelier Maison Baguès was launched in Paris in 1860, or in Auvergne in 1840. Still active today, the brand remains an exemplar of French design savoir-faire.

Under founding metalsmith Nöel Baguès’s direction, Maison Baguès began as a specialist in liturgical bronze candlesticks, before late-19^th-century technological advancement—and the 1880 managerial arrival of Nöel’s son, Eugène—saw the broadening of the atelier’s range to include bronze fixtures for newly-invented electrical lighting. Expansion drove the following decades, as Eugène, together with his own sons, Victor and Robert, continued to swell out the atelier’s Art Deco-tinged output. By the 1920’s, Maison Baguès’s collections included gilded iron fixtures—the iconic Parrots & Foliage hand-strung crystal chandeliers  and complexly carved wall sconces —as well as metal gates, accent tables, and stair bannisters (which still adorn Parisian locales like the Porte Dorée and the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées).

Delicate and detailed, Maison Baguès’s bespoke designs and metalwork attracted the social elite. In 1928, eminent bourgeoisie décorateur Armand-Albert Rateau famously used a selection of Maison Baguès accessories to furnish the townhouse interiors of haute couturist Jeanne Lanvin. Beyond Rateau, the atelier was commissioned by many chic interiors icons like Raymond Subes and the legendary decorating firm Maison Jansen. Notably, the Maison Jansen collaboration underscores the majority of Maison Baguès’s design on today’s vintage market, where the atelier’s pieces, seldom marked or labeled with the Baguès name, are often advertised as “supplied by Jansen” or “Jansen Style.”

On the heels of such collaborations, Baguès continued in the interwar period to expand into the international consciousness and market, culminating in the establishment of retail branches in New York, Cairo, London, Brussels, and Rome. The atelier experienced a brief hiccup amid the Great Depression, passing into the hands of bankers, before Victor Baguès’s son, Jean-Pierre, repurchased the company in 1957 and revived its collection with new work. Standouts from this later oeuvre include the Perroquet gilt-metal sconces with cut crystal elements; the Imitation Bamboo Coffee Table; and a Maison Charles-designed metal floor lamp—all designed ca. 1960s.

Today, Maison Baguès devotes the majority of its energies toward preserving the company’s heritage through restoring and re-editing their catalogue’s most beautiful models for large French and international decoration offices, such as Alberto Pinto, Pierre Yves Rochon, and Nina Campbell.