Studio: international art (55.1912)

Studio-Talk

GAUZE EMBROIDERY. DESIGNED BY ERNST
AUI'SEESER ; WORKED BY KATHLEEN AUFSEESER
(Copyright, Trrnit, Munich)

on the most delicate of fabrics, for the material
employed is white miller’s gauze. Aufseeser was
born in 1880 in Nuremberg, was mostly self-
taught, but received his first instruction from F. H.
Ehmke. Admiration for William Morris drew
him to England, where he studied in the Slade
School. He is at present working
in Munich as an independent de-
signer of books, posters, stained
glass, textiles, lace, and em-
broidery. In the latter he has
always been helped by his wife,
an Irish lady, a pupil of the best
German and Belgian schools.

The “ Florstickereien ” have wan-
dered into the hands of many
private collectors, and have also
been bought by museums and
State collections.

At Fritz Gurlitt’s Ludwig von
Hoffman carried us into Arcadia
with his handsome youths on
southern shores. He adores the
statuesque model reminiscent of
Praxiteles and Thorwaldsen, and
this serene humanity is rendered
in its natural bearing or arranged

in effective solo motifs and groups. Thus pictures
of solemnity and grace are achieved and they are
made to assume the aspect of modernity by a
subtle play of sunlight. The artist has also suc-
ceeded in monumental figures, but his best works
are to be found in smaller frames.

Wilhelm Kimbel, of the firm of Kimbel and
Friedrichsen, stands foremost among Berlin furni-
ture-makers. He is, in fact, an artist-craftsman
who, by descent from one of our oldest families
of joiners, was destined for his vocation. He
learned his craft in the ancestral workshop, so that
he is perfectly one with his tools and materials. A
true artistic bent has engendered an almost
irrepressible longing to become a painter, and this
proclivity has been felicitously utilised in his
craft by studies and journeys which have filled his
sketch-books with a real treasure-store of architec-
tural motifs. Kimbel is a clever thinker; it
is his delight occasionally to copy exactly an old
piece of supreme beauty, or to profit by historical
reminiscences, but he is at the same time a creative
designer. He has kept aloof from the modern
movement because he feared that the experimental
spirit might endanger his solid training as a crafts-
man, but- indirectly the character of his work is
certainly a help to progressive tendencies, and re-
dounds to the credit of German craftsmanship.
Kimbel is also a master of carving, inlay, and
ornamental decoration of all sorts, and his choice
of woods is always governed by good taste. His

GAUZE EMBROIDERY. DESIGNED BY ERNST AUFSEESER; WORKED BY
KATHLEEN AUFSEESER

!S4