GERMAN ARCHITECTURE AND DECORATION
While the model furniture of the Vereinigte Werkstatten has
only in the last few years found its way into the dwellings of the
middle-classes, the Deutsche Werkstatten fur Handwerkskunst at
Dresden and Munich, a limited liability company which originated
in a small cabinet-making concern, but now employs several hundred
workers, has from the outset catered especially for people of modest
means. These workshops, which have as artist collaborators Richard
Riemerschmid, Adelbert Niemeyer and Karl Bertsch A.O.M., have
rapidly acquired prominence, and have established branches in Berlin,
Hamburg and Hanover. The needs of those who prefer the
traditional style of household equipment, and yet desire the altered
conditions of the present day to be taken into account, are more
closely studied by a limited liability company established at Saaleck,
in Thuringia, under the leadership of Prof. Paul Schultze-Naumburg
—the Saalecker Werkstatten—which does not restrict itself to
furnishing rooms, but undertakes the building and complete fitting
up of houses and the laying out of gardens. Mention must also be
made of the Bernard Stadler workshops at Paderborn-Werkstatten
fur Wohnungsein-richtung—whose artistic yet practical work has
made good headway in the Rhine Province and Westphalia.
The fact that such large undertakings as Peter Bruckmann
& Sons’ silver-goods factory in Heilbronn, the Vereinigte Smyrna-
Teppich-Fabriken in Berlin, and the Linoleum-Fabrik“ Anker-Marke”
in Delmenhorst, to name but a few, should have associated them-
selves with the Deutsche Werkbund, is bound to exercise a good
effect on other manufacturers; while fruitful co-operation of
artists and employers is met with in all the other branches of
industrial production.
Thus there are at work in the Werkbund forces of the most
diverse kinds, but since the architects place the construction and
equipment of their houses in the hands of members of the Bund in
preference to others, and artist-designers entrust the execution of
their designs to the manufacturing members, whose technical skill is a
guarantee for thorough workmanship, and these again in giving out
their commissions prefer the artist members of the Union, there arises
a constant co-operation and along with it mutual instruction and
accommodation founded upon mutual trust. That is, perhaps, the
most fertile germ which this unification of forces conceals, and
which in the course of years will develop into a mighty tree,
bearing a crop of mature and precious truits.

L. Deubner.