“Patrons of Wiener Werkstätte Jewelry” by Janis Staggs

The Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshops), an artists and craftsmen collective, was launched in 1903. At its outset, the firm focused on metalwork, including jewelry. The group was initially comprised of two designers—Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser—and three artisans. The Wiener Werkstätte inaugurated its own fashion department in 1910, which quickly proved to be one of the most profitable divisions within the firm. It catered to a well-heeled clientele and offered artistic clothing, hats, shoes, and other accessories. This lecture will highlight some of the ways that modern Viennese art and design are inextricably linked by examining select patrons of Gustav Klimt who also favored Wiener Werkstätte jewelry.

Janis Staggs, Director of Curatorial and Manager of Publications at Neue Galerie New York, has been with the museum since 2000. She has organized numerous exhibitions during her tenure at the museum, including “Wiener Werkstätte Jewelry” (2008) and “Gustav Klimt and Adele Bloch-Bauer: The Woman in Gold” (2015), and co-curated “Wiener Werkstätte, 1903–1932: The Luxury of Beauty” (2017) and “Ernst Ludwig Kirchner” (2019), among others. She has written extensively on the intersection between the fine and decorative arts in Vienna 1900.