Hoffman forensically oversaw every inch of the sprawling, and brilliantly eccentric, 4,000 sq ft interior, from the Gustav Klimt mural that embellishes the dining room wall, to the dresses that Stoclet's Parisienne wife Madame Suzanne wore whilst hosting guests including Diaghilev, Stravinsky and Cocteau there. But perhaps their greatest act came in 1905-11 when the Belgian banker and collector Adolphe Stoclet commissioned the creation of Palais Stoclet, his private mansion on the outskirts of Brussels. Over close to thirty years, they served a slew of illustrious clients, even briefly opening a Manhattan branch. In 1903, he co-founded the Wiener Werkstätte, a prodigious (though not profit-making) Viennese workshop and collective of artists and designers dedicated to bringing the idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk, or the “total work of art”, evocatively to life. Informed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and William Morris’s liberated English Arts and Crafts ethos, in an increasingly industrialised world, Hoffmann unerringly believed in the power and the beauty of the work of the hand. His work is defined both by its originality and cool geometry. Reacting against the dominant Art Nouveau style, Hoffmann drew on a smorgasbord of influences, including Islamic decoration, to create compelling, eclectic and highly imaginative designs and interiors. It's a visually arresting shortcut to his greatest design hits: There’s the graphic glassware he conceived for Lobmeyr the thrillingly minimal Bentwood geometry of the Seven-Ball Chair the gently furling and unfurling flourish of the two-handled silver bowl the fantastically simple Wiener Silber flatware and again, and again, the image of the perfectly formed cigar case elaborately decorated with semi-precious stones that's more work of art than practical pocket trinket. Tap #josefhoffmann into Instagram, and you’ll be confronted with some 12K images of his vast oeuvre. More than a century later, the angular elegance and sheer exuberance of Hoffmann’s creative output – which spanned from palaces to furniture, silverware to textiles, and ceramics to jewellery – continues to hold us in thrall. “Hoff is the only one that can bring off a new blouse as easily as a new public building,” wrote a workmate of the prolific Austrian architect, teacher and radically moderne designer Josef Hoffmann back in 1910.
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