vase

A decorative artist and sculptor, Michael Powolny is best known as an early 20th-century pioneer in modern Austrian ceramics. However, he also made influential designs for glass. A graduate of the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Applied Arts) in Vienna, Powolny founded the Wiener Keramik (Vienna Ceramic) workshop with the Bohemian ceramist Bertold Löffler, another graduate of the Kunstgewerbeschule, in 1906. Their products were sold through the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshops), which promoted modernism in the applied arts. Powolny’s ceramic designs included geometric pieces in black and white for the Wiener Werkstätte and more traditional figural sculptures in bright colors, such as putti holding garlands. His work for the Wiener Werkstätte also included the design of the black and white tiles that decorated the bar and cloakroom of Josef Hoffmann’s Fledermaus (Bat) café in Vienna (1907), as well as the interior of the Palais Stoclet in Brussels (1908–1911). In 1913, Powolny and Löffler’s Wiener Keramik was dissolved, and Powolny began to produce designs in glass for the Loetz and J. & L. Lobmeyr glass companies. However, he continued sporadically to design in ceramic and porcelain, the materials for which he was best known. Powolny was also head of the ceramics workshop at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna, where he taught from 1909 to 1936. This unusual Art Deco vase joins other designs by Powolny in the Museum’s collection, such as the footed Pokal “Opal mit Streifen” (Opal, with stripes), which was designed for Loetz in 1914 and exhibited at the Deutsche Werkbund Exhibition in Cologne, Germany, in the same year. Unsigned. The vase is Loetz product no. 935. Published in Elisabeth Frottier, Michael Powolny: Keramik und Glas aus Wien, 1900 bis 1950, Vienna and Cologne: Böhlau, 1990, no. 395, fig. 96. A larger version of this model is published in Helmut Ricke and others, Lötz: Böhmisches Glas, 1880–1940, v. 1, Werkmonographie, Munich: Prestel, 1989, p. 287, no. 352. This model came in three sizes: H. 23 cm, 18.7 cm, and 14.1 cm.