Josef Hoffmann - Pirnitz, 1870 - Wien, 1956

Austrian architect, designer and craftsman, Josef Hoffmann was co-funder in 1987 of the Vienna Secession and in 1903 of the «Wiener Werkstätte». A pupil of Otto Wagner, in whose studio he worked for a short time in 1895 on his return from a year in Italy. Hoffmann’s work combined the rationalism of Wagner with a geometrical, rectilinear style of decoration influenced by the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Hoffmann’s design’s for the Werkstätte thus unite extreme individuality and painstaking hand craftsmanship with the concern for truth to materials and functionalism which characterised all his work.