LOT Phillips de Pury & Company  /  20-21st Century Design Session 1  / 

36

various properties, Wolfgang and, Pola Hoffmann, A rare Pentray, ca. 1930, manufactured by the Ea...

Currency:USD Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:2,500.00 - 3,500.00 USD
various properties, Wolfgang and, Pola Hoffmann, A rare Pentray, ca. 1930, manufactured by the Ea...
various properties
Wolfgang and
Pola Hoffmann
A rare Pentray, ca. 1930
manufactured by the Early American Pewter Company, Boston; pewter, stamped with cipher and artist and manufacturer's stamp
2 1/8 x 6 7/8 x 5 in. (5.4 x 17.4 x 12.7 cm)
Estimate: $2,500-3,500
Literature
J. Stewart Johnson, American Modern: 1925-1940, Design for a New Age,
New York, 2000, p. 117
Modern American Design by the American Union of Decorative Artists and Craftsmen, New York, 1930, p. 81
Karen Davies, At Home in Manhattan: Modern Decorative Arts, 1925 to the Depression, New Haven, 1983, p. 77
The works on these pages are representative of the American designs of Wolfgang and Pola Hoffmann, the son and daughter-in-law of Josef Hoffmann. The Hoffmanns met at the Kunstgewerbeschule and immigrated to New York in 1925. As a team, they designed a series of smoking and desk accessories that modernized the stately style of the Early American Pewter Company. In 1930, when they exhibited selections from this series at the American Union of Decorative Artists and Craftsmen (AUDAC), the works were positioned next to an essay on industrial design by Richard Bach, illustrating the author's central observation that “the resurgence of quality in quantity means the resurgence of craftmanship in the sense of ‘designing in the material.'"

The Hoffmanns divorced in the mid 1930s, and Pola, remarried to the mystery writer Rex Stout, became a noted weaver and textile designer. Wolfgang moved to Chicago and became, in his words, “captive designer” for the Howell Company. From 1934-1942, he produced a wide range of tubular and flat-steel furniture patented as “Chromsteel.” The rocking chair certainly recalls the bentwood designs of his father, while the brute strength of his cocktail/coffee table design, with its exposed screws and double-cross braces, is an icon of America’s Machine Age and the most enduring model of his Howell tenure. When the firm’s output was restricted by the Second World War, Hoffmann quit the furniture business altogether, and began a second career as a photographer.
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