Studio: international art (17.1899)

Fritz Erier

CARVED WOOD GROTESQUES BY FRITZ ERLER

straight line which Fritz Erler delights to escape,
but it makes a fixture of the side lights, and scarcely
adds to the effect. The depressed arch of the
window-heads is not an agreeable line, but here
again we have the work of the architect almost
retrieved in the graceful ellipse with which the
decorator carries his cornice over them. There is
a certain monotony in the metal screens under the
windows, behind which lurk the comfortable but
unlovely heat-coils. Mr. Erler has done such
charming things with his metal-work elsewhere, as
in the great hinge-straps of the music-press, or in
the well-conceived escutcheons on the doors, that
one ventures to ask for something more interesting
in these coil-screens. It must, however, be granted
that the modern “ heat plant ” is of an inherent

utilitarian ugliness which seems to wither the
flower of fancy in its deadly breath.

And this brings us to Erler’s handling of
another problem of modern house-decoration,
the electric lamps. The difficulties in this detail
are not at first apparent; in fact, there seems to
be here an opportunity for new and charming
combinations of glass and metal; yet the sum of
artistic effort in this direction has not accom-
plished much. It is to be feared that the electric
lamp in decoration is to remain very much what
the railway is to the landscape.

In those fantastic beam-heads, into which
Fritz Erler’s chisel has wrought the grim imagery
of a primitive Thuringian, he has found a way to
escape the commonplace with his side-lights, by
ringing the muzzles of his aurochs, and his wild
ram, and other legendary beasts, to depend from
them the little lamps through whose shelly whorls
the light is strained.

In the big lamp, which hangs from the centre
of the ceiling, we have an admirable design,
handled with all the freedom and genius of a
Persian worker in metals. This is in wrought
iron, hammered, with a dull surface brushed
with acid to a soft grey tone, as in the fireplace-
hood and other iron-work.

The music-room is entered from the hall. It
is eleven metres long by eight wide, and five
and a half high. The moor-oak, with which it
is chiefly covered, is cut from trunks taken out
of the bog where they have lain for centuries.
The colour has the effect of a wash of Indian
ink. The pear-wood has a yellowish glow, and
both are rubbed to a dull finish. The wall-
covering, the carved beam-ends, and the ceiling-
beams, are of the moor-oak. The top member
of the wainscot, the cove above the pictures,
the ground of the ceiling, and the floor of the room
and platform, are in the yellowish pear-wood.
The risers of the steps are in moor-oak, also the
organ-case, the great press, and other furniture
of the room. The marble is from Oran in Africa,
and has the colour of peach-bloom. We have
here the symphonic ground-tones of grey and
yellow. The colour-motive of the painted decora-
tion is the tender yellow of the evening heavens,
an undertone of which pervades the whole compo-
sition, and is found even in the darker nuances.
The paintings are in tempera on wood and accord
exquisitely with the remainder of the decorations.

A slight description of their subjects will suffice :
the photographs, despite their coarsening of the
yellows, give a better idea of their treatment than

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