M208 Music salon for Fritz Waerndorfer, Vienna

Commission

Mackintosh and Viennese client, Fritz Waerndorfer, a wealthy cotton-spinning mill owner, first became acquainted in June 1900 when Waerndorfer travelled to Britain and included a visit to Glasgow. He seems to have visited Scotland and England on behalf of Josef Hoffmann, who was vice-president of the Secession and involved in planning the Eighth Exhibition to take place later that year. 1 In October to December 1900 Mackintosh and Margaret Macdonald visited Vienna to oversee their exhibition room. 2

By April 1902, Waerndorfer had commissioned Mackintosh to design a music room for his home in the area of Vienna known as the 'Cottage-Viertel' (Cottage District) and had received drawings from Mackintosh for his scheme. 3 Waerndorfer had also at around the same time commissioned designs from his friends Josef Hoffmann, for a new dining room, and Koloman Moser, for a room for works from his art collection. By May 1902 a study and a children's room designed by Hoffmann were complete and illustrated in the German design journal Innendekoration. 4

Vienna's Cottage District was established in 1872 with the foundation of the Wiener Cottage Verein (Viennese Cottage Association), which aimed to create a residential area in the city's N.W. outer suburbs based on the ideas of the English Garden City movement. At this time, Vienna was growing rapidly and the Cottage District was intended to provide an alternative to the ever-increasing number of grand new apartment buildings, and more humble tenements, in the city centre and inner suburbs. Heinrich von Ferstel, architect of the University of Vienna 's main building and of the Votivkirche, was instrumental in promoting this aspect of housing reform. The Cottage Verein set out regulations specifying the dimensions, spacing and character of the houses to be built and activities permitted, particularly if noise or unpleasant smells were produced or if there was a risk of fire; the pursuit of trades was strictly forbidden. The houses were built by the professional and aristocratic classes and are much larger than the word 'cottage' suggests. Acknowledging the English ideas behind the district, many houses were built with unrendered brick facades, uncommon in Vienna. 5

The house, in yellow and red brick with pyramidal and steeply pitched roofs, was built c. 1880 for a Professor Franz Ržiha and purchased by Waerndorfer in 1896. 6

Exterior

The only surviving drawing for Mackintosh's music room is a single sheet of plans, elevations and sections showing the small external addition which was submitted to the city district planning authorities on 21 June 1902 (M405-001). The drawing is not in Mackintosh's hand and in the bottom right corner Waerndorfer himself inscribed his name and the address of the house. The drawing is also signed by Viennese architects and builders Laske Fiala with their address. Presumably they carried out the construction work. 7 It may be that this sheet of drawings was based on others by Mackintosh: writing to Hoffmann on 29 April 1902 Waerndorfer admitted that 'I cannot quite comprehend how Mackintosh imagines the external addition for the inglenook', but was sure that Hoffmann could help. It appears that Mackintosh in fact hoped Hoffmann would look at the drawings and then inform Waerndorfer of anything that was not right. 8 Internally, the drawings do not entirely correspond to the building work carried out, which was documented in photographs dating from c. 1903. The differences may be due to alterations to the plan for which drawings are not known. 9

Mackintosh's design extended the existing shallow bay in the N. wall of the room to create the fireplace inglenook with a window and added a short, slightly battered chimney. The bay had a shallow, slightly pitched roof with flattened, projecting eaves, reminiscent of the canted bay at Windyhill. The chimney extended a little above the first-floor string-course. Mackintosh's addition was roughcast in the coarsely textured Scottish manner, quite different from the smooth stucco typically used in Vienna, and very much in contrast with the brick-faced house to which it was attached. 10 The roughcast and the form of the chimney are similar to the rear elevation of the Willow Tea Rooms, which they slightly predate. Mackintosh's roughcast addition with its curious short chimney would have stood out against the red and yellow brick of the house, its prominence emphasised by the exposed location close to the junction of Karl-Ludwig-Strasse with Colloredogasse. Mackintosh's work, together with the distinctive porch on the E. elevation, probably designed by Hoffmann, would have drawn attention to Waerndorfer's aesthetic tastes; it is noteworthy that Waerndorfer did not commission a complete new house.

Interior

Mackintosh's plans for the music-room interior were at an advanced stage by late April 1902. On 29 April Waerndorfer wrote to Hoffmann that Mackintosh had 'sent full-size drawings for all fitted woodwork'. 11 The furnishings and fittings of the scheme recall earlier work at Mackintosh's flat in Mains Street, Glasgow, the room setting he created for the Eighth Secession exhibition in Vienna and the Rose Boudoir room setting for the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative Art in Turin. 12

The new inglenook had a low ceiling at the same height as the frieze rail around the rest of the room, with a curious light fitting set into a dome, and built-in, upholstered seating to the right of the fireplace with arm rests reminiscent of similar seating at the Pettigrew & Stephens tea room (1899–1901), and the children's playroon in the House for an Art Lover design (1901). In the E. wall, in an existing bay with windows on all three sides, further fitted seating was set behind a newly created horseshoe-shaped opening. Mackintosh was perhaps inspired here by a similar feature created by Josef Hoffmann for Viennese industrialist Paul Wittengenstein at his country estate, Bergerhöhe, in 1898. 13

Mackintosh also designed an elaborate case for the piano, which was to incorporate two small square gesso panels by Margaret Macdonald, The Opera of the Winds and The Opera of the Seas. 14 In a rectangular opening in the W. wall, opposite the window bay, a curtain separated the music room from Hoffmann's dining room. The curtain was embellished with four appliqué panels by Frances Macdonald. It is thought that at dinner parties the curtain was drawn back to reveal musicians who played during the meal. 15 By late December 1902 the furnishings and fittings for the music room were almost complete with the exception of the piano, the arrival of which seems to have been delayed until both 'Opera' gesso panels for it were ready – one of these is dated 1903. 16

The centrepiece of the room was Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh's three-part gesso frieze illustrating a scene from Belgian symbolist Maurice Maeterlinck's play the Seven Princesses. 17 The panels are dated 1906 and were photographed that year in Glasgow by London architectural photographer Henry Bedford Lemere. 18 A contemporary commentary suggest the panels were installed in 1907. 19 It is thought that Mackintosh also intended to create a gesso frieze to complement Macdonald's and to be installed on the facing wall 20 In August 1902 Mackintosh wrote to Hermann Muthesius, 'we are busy just now doing 2 large panels for Vienna of Maeterlinck's 'Seven Princesses', a most delightful and fascinating subject'. A design drawing believed to be for his frieze is at The Hunterian. 21

Mackintosh and the origins of the Wiener Werkstätte

On 9 June 1903 Josef Hoffmann, Koloman Moser and Fritz Waerndorfer, as financier and commerical director, founded the Wiener Werkstätte (WW), a guild modelled on English and Scottish examples, such as C. R. Ashbee's Guild of Handicraft. 22 By this date Hoffmann's dining room and Moser's gallery for Waerndorfer were already complete. Intriguingly both rooms appear in the Wiener Werkstätte photographic archive, the only examples of work by Hoffmann or Moser dating from before its foundation. 23 The striking rooms for Waerndorfer may therefore be considered as a prototype project for the WW and a means of advertising their work to potential clients, with Mackintosh closely involved in its origins.

Although names of a few of the craftsmen who were involved at the Waerndorfer house are known, none of them appear in later published sources listing craftspeople working for the WW. A W. Hollmann is recorded as having carried out the earliest work for Waerndorfer's study and children's room, and, writing to Hoffmann, Waerndorfer named Max Schmidt and a W. Schmidt – described as a pupil of Hoffmann – with whom he discussed the materials of the Mackintosh room. 24 Nevertheless, Mackintosh's remarks in a letter from c. September 1902 suggest that the high quality of the workmanship and materials in his room were precisely those which later characterised the work of the WW. Mackintosh wrote, 'Herr Waerndorfer is having all the workmanship and material of the very best and the designs are being carried out with the greatest care, so it should be very interesting when it is finished.' 25

The support of Mackintosh in their new endeavour was clearly significant to Waerndorfer and Hoffmann: they separately visited the Mackintoshes in Glasgow during trips to Britain in September and December 1902 respectively; and in early 1903 Waerndorfer wrote to Mackintosh in confidence outlining their advanced plans. 26 Mackintosh responded with great enthusiasm, clearly believing wholeheartedly in his friends' mission. His words were later translated by Waerndorfer for Hoffmann's benefit. 27 Waerndorfer later conveyed to Hoffmann Mackintosh's design for a Wiener Werkstätte monogram. 28 Mackintosh complimented his Austrian colleagues' proposals and advised them to begin immediately. 'Yes, the plan that Hoffmann and Moser have conceived is great and brilliantly thought through, and if they have the means, they should risk nothing, and I can only say begin today! If I were in Vienna I'd like to assist with a big strong shovel!' 29

Reception

Mackintosh's design and choice of materials appear to have been the source of both amusement – partly at Mackintosh's expense – and annoyance to the craftsmen charged with realising the music room. In his 29 April 1902 letter to Hoffmann, Waerndorfer described an entertaining conversation with Max Schmidt and W. Schmidt who had visited him to view Mackintosh's plans. The young W. Schmidt explained: 'You see, the material is all wrong. We would work that out very differently, but Mackintosh does have so much taste. ... The door could be very amusing, only because there is so little [on] it. ... The joiners are going to be annoyed.' The youngster had then, as Waeerndorfer reported, tackled the job with 'determination and audacity'. 30

The completed music room was described both before and after the installation of the Seven Princesses by journalist Ludwig Hevesi, an ardent supporter of avant-garde fine and applied arts, and a friend of Waerndorfer. Hevesi recalled his experience of the Hoffmann and Mackintosh rooms following a visit in November 1905. He concluded that Mackintosh's work was 'an artistic curiosity of the first order but simultaneously a site of spiritual pleasure'. 31

The language of his 1909 analysis seems imbued with the other-worldly qualities of the story of the 'Seven Princesses' and its presentation in the gesso panels. 'Poetry wafts around everything; such a transfiguration of things.' At the same time he declared that 'the unusual has been made comfortable; the new, pleasing. It admits one into its confidence, but one does not know how.' He concluded that 'this art makes the human more humane. Stronger, healthier, more self-contained.' 32

The Studio's Vienna correspondent, another supporter of the avant-garde and acquaintance of many of its proponents, English expatriate A. S. Levetus, writing in the Glasgow Herald in 1909, considered Mackintosh's room and Macdonald's gesso panels to be 'perhaps their greatest work, for they were allowed perfectly free scope'. 33

In 1912, when Mackintosh's reputation was on the wane, she reminded Studio readers that 'some of Mr Charles Mackintosh's best work' was to be found in Vienna. Using appropriate musical allusions, she reflected on the natural, holistic precision of the design, the free rein Mackintosh had been given, and the regard in which the room was held.

The composition forms an organic whole, each part fitting into the rest with the same concord as do the passages of a great symphony; each thought resolves itself as do the chords in music, till the orchestration is perfect, the effect of repose filling the soul. The colour-scheme is red, lavender and white. Each object in the room has its due place. The accentuation always comes on the right note, and each note has been expanded to its right artistic compass. Mr and Mrs Mackintosh [...] were given unfettered discretion, and thus their imagination was allowed full scope. Many pilgrimages have been made to this room, for connoisseurs find great pleasure and delight in it. 34

Subsequent history

The design and production of exclusive objects, interiors, and later buildings, for a limited and very wealthy group of patrons resulted in financially unstable circumstances, particularly for Waerndorfer who invested significant funds in the WW from his and his family's cotton-spinning businesses. In 1909 so dire was the financial position that Waerndorfer paid off loans worth around 300,000 Austro-Hungarian crowns. His personal financial security suffered and during 1913 he transferred ownership of the house to his wife, Lili. In May 1914 Waerndorfer left Vienna, emigrating to the USA alone. The following year Lili Waerndorfer and the children left the house in Karl-Ludwig-Strasse to live with her mother elsewhere in Vienna. 35

A short time later, during 1915 or 1916, the contents of the Waerndorfer house were offered for sale. The newspaper advertisement called attention in its headline to the 'Mackintosh Salon', described as 'of particular interest'. Work by Hoffmann, Moser and Josef Maria Olbrich was also mentioned. 36 Mackintosh's work was in 1916 clearly still held in esteem in some corners of Vienna. Not only did his room grab the sale headline, the furnishings and fittings were also the focus of an attempt by the director of the Austrian Museum of Art and Industry – precursor of the Museum of Applied Arts, MAK (Museum für Angewandte Kunst) – Eduard Leisching, to gain a new acquisition for his museum. The house was eventually sold to a couple named Wilhelm and Martha Freund in 1916. 37

Precisely what became of the Mackintosh music room is not clear but it is likely that the items entered private collections. The two small gesso panels for the piano appeared at auction in New York in 1991. At an unknown date, the three gesso panels of the Seven Princesses found their way into the Museum für Angewandte Kunst. In 1990 the panels were rediscovered in the Museum during extensive renovation work. Inspection by conservators revealed that the panels had been cut away from the music-room wall, destroying the lower edge of the timber panels and destabilising them. Extensive conservation work followed before the panels were put on display in winter 1994–5. 38

A report on the condition of the Waerndorfer house was produced as part of the Mackintosh Buildings Survey, led by the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society and carried out between 2015 and 2016. 39

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