"The Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshop), which grew out of The Vienna Secession, was founded in 1903 by Koloman Moser and Josef Hoffmann. It was the beginning of the Modernist Movement.
Artistic production and of “total artwork” of utilitarian items was the goal. The Wiener Werkstätte
unified artists and craftsmen from different disciplines. More than eighty artisans were involved in fashion design. The Wiener Werkstätte was simply a movement for aesthetics in form and function to unite all aspects of art in life. Goods were not mass produced and were not produced for any economic reasons.
Fine design and craft would replace mass production and poor quality in areas of fashion, furniture and graphics by catering to the elite and wealthy. These items were not necessities nor were mass-production techniques ever adopted. Over the years additional fashion accessories like evening bags were added. The first purses were made of tooled leather and were quite plain, lacking much decoration. These bags were in fact marked with the stamp of The Wiener Werkstätte. With the growth of the fashion department, beaded bags, belts and lariats were added. Many of the WW purses had deerskin, kid leather or fabric linings and were wholly completed within the workshop itself. Perhaps the industrial age allowed for this. They never produced large amounts of any of their designs and the beaded works were not marked. The organization had a motto “Better to work 10 days on one product than to manufacture 10 products in one day”. Had they done this, the work may have been more affordable, rather than appealing mainly to the wealthy and the patrons of the arts. For a period of time, The Wiener Werkstätte was so successful that it had sales outlets in Karlsbad, Marienbad, Zurich, New York and Berlin. In the long run, The Wiener Werkstätte struggled to survive after the fall of the Austrian Empire and was liquidated in 1932.
It is my belief there was some crossover into the Wiener Werkstätte of some of the Swabian bead artists. The Wiener Werkstätte may have influenced some of the German workshops. There may have been crossover of artisans into other workshops especially in the early 1900s as the modernist movement took hold.
The Wiener Werkstätte never made an absolute duplication of any of their beaded purses. The German Swabian cottage industry worked with patterns. This is why they could be duplicated by pattern even though colors could be different. I have attached an example photo of my MAK (Austrian Museum of Applied Arts) purse, Paula Higgins’ MAK purse and a photo of a similar one in the MAK archives. These three are WW by Fritzi Low Lazaar. You will notice that they are similar, but not exactly the same."
