Josef HOFFMANN (1870-1956)
Manufactured by Jakob SOULEK
Vienna 1911

Low sideboard in ebonized and polished pearwood, with two doors sculpted with a gouge in very low relief, featuring festooned drapery with a lush decoration of black mulberry fruits and foliage, also repeated on the four legs. The tabletop perimeter is adorned on three sides with a mother-of-pearl marquetry frieze featuring a stylized floral motif, alternating with touches of varied shades.

This remarkable piece was created the year of the completion of the Stoclet Palace (1905-1911), a manifesto of total art, mobilizing all members of the Wiener Werkstätte under the direction of Josef Hoffmann, including Gustav Klimt, who created the dining room friezes.
It adopts its architectural and decorative codes, contrasting cubic volumes and clean surfaces with extremely refined decorations, anticipating the Art Deco movement.

Originally featuring six doors and four uprights supporting a curtain by Wilhelm Jonash with a stylized floral motif, this sideboard was subsequently modified at an unknown date, becoming a two-door sideboard and stripped of its curtain. The significant width of this sideboard in its initial six-door version—332 cm—is likely the primary reason it was later split into three separate sideboards. This modification was carried out either by Josef Hoffmann himself, as the piece had not found a buyer, or by the purchaser or their heirs wishing to divide the furniture among themselves.

The high level of skill required to transform such an expensive piece of furniture indicates the involvement of an experienced cabinetmaker, who logically would have been its manufacturer, Jakob Soulek, active until the mid-1930s; this would have been in consultation with the master, whose renown endured long after the closure of the Wiener Werkstätte in 1932.

A pair of sideboards lacking the mother-of-pearl frieze but featuring identical doors is part of the collection at the “Bel Étage” gallery in Vienna. These are, in all probability, the two pairs of doors from the original six-door sideboard.

Height 92 cm, width 116 cm, depth 65.5 cm