Walnut Wall Bookshelf by Carl Auböck

The Austrian metal designer Carl Auböck II (1900-1957) took over the Werkstätte Carl Auböck, founded in Vienna in 1912 by his father Karl Heinrich Auböck, in 1926, after studying at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and, from 1919 to 1921, as a Bauhaus student in Weimar under Johannes Itten. In the workshop on Bernardgasse in Vienna he replaced the traditional production of Viennese bronzes with modern everyday objects made of brass, leather, horn and found materials. Among his best-known works are leather-covered whiskey glasses and clocks, oversized brass paper clips and clothes pegs, and a crown-shaped ashtray. Up to the 1950s several thousand different designs were created under his direction. His son Carl Auböck III later continued the workshop with a more internationally oriented approach to furniture and object design.