Adolf Loos "Scissors Chair", Vienna 1913-31

The high-qual­i­ty chair frame is made of sol­id oak. The back­rest fea­tures a cen­tral­ly posi­tioned medal­lion carved in a heart shape. The arm­rests are curved and intri­cate­ly carved with a flo­ral motif on both the inner and out­er sides at their ends.

The scis­sor-like struts that con­nect the arm­rests to the sled-shaped legs are held togeth­er by four met­al joints, each adorned at the ends with large brass knobs. This par­tic­u­lar chair design traces back to the fold­ing chairs of the Ital­ian Ear­ly Renais­sance of the ear­ly 16^th cen­tu­ry.
Illus­trat­ed in Her­mann Schmitz, ​“Das Möbel­w­erk”, page 81.

Adolf Loos used this chair form, among oth­er things, for an inte­ri­or design project at Prinz Eugen-Straße 80, in Vienna’s 4^th dis­trict, for his client Paul May­er.

The work­shop respon­si­ble for the exe­cu­tion was like­ly the renowned Vien­nese fur­ni­ture man­u­fac­tur­er Friedrich Otto Schmidt, with whom Loos had a close work­ing rela­tion­ship.

A pho­to­graph of the fire­place room of Paul Mayer’s apart­ment can be found in the Alberti­na Col­lec­tions / Alberti­na, Adolf Loos Archives. Please see image below.

Adolf Loos, born on Decem­ber 10, 1870, in Brno, and died on August 23, 1933, in Kalks­burg near Vien­na, was an archi­tect, design­er, writer, and teacher. In art his­tor­i­cal lit­er­a­ture, Loos is con­sid­ered a key pio­neer of mod­ernism in archi­tec­ture and design. He strong­ly dis­tanced him­self from the archi­tects of the Wiener Werk­stätte, and also main­tained a crit­i­cal stance toward the Deutsch­er Werk­bund and the Bauhaus.
Togeth­er with major rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Vien­nese Jugend­stil and its asso­ci­at­ed move­ments like the Wiener Seces­sio­n­and the Wiener Werk­stätte — includ­ing fig­ures such as Otto Wag­n­er, Josef Hoff­mann, and Joseph Maria Olbrich, as well as Max Fabi­ani and Jože Plečnik (both stu­dents of Wag­n­er) — Loos had a sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence on the devel­op­ment of the Vien­nese style. How­ev­er, it’s par­tic­u­lar­ly note­wor­thy that Loos was a fierce oppo­nent of Jugend­stil (also referred to as the ​“Seces­sion style”).
Loos was close friends with lead­ing artists of his time, such as Arnold Schön­berg, Oskar Kokosch­ka, Peter Altenberg, and Karl Kraus, whose careers he pas­sion­ate­ly sup­port­ed. Artis­ti­cal­ly, he influ­enced many lat­er mod­ern archi­tects, includ­ing Richard Neu­tra, Hein­rich Kul­ka, and Lui­gi Blau. Loos also worked as a teacher and ran his own pri­vate archi­tec­ture school, where he taught stu­dents such as Paul Engel­mann and Leopold Fis­ch­er. One of his most impor­tant writ­ings is undoubt­ed­ly ​“Orna­ment and Crime” (1908), in which Loos argued vig­or­ous­ly against the use of orna­ment in design.

In the 1920s, Loos spent time in Paris, where he main­tained close ties to the avant-garde art scene. Between 1925 and 1926, he built a house for Tris­tan Tzara — a French poet, jour­nal­ist, art col­lec­tor, com­pos­er, film­mak­er, and co-founder of Dadaism. In 1927, he also designed a house in Paris’s Avenue Bugeaud for the dancer Josephine Bak­er, fea­tur­ing a hor­i­zon­tal­ly striped black-and-white façade, although this project was nev­er real­ized.
Besides the famous Looshaus on Vien­na’s Michael­er­platz, one of his most out­stand­ing works is the Vil­la Müller in Prague, built in 1930. It is almost entire­ly pre­served and now oper­ates as a muse­um. As with many of Loos’ designs, the cube plays a cen­tral role in the villa’s exte­ri­or. Inside, lux­u­ri­ous mate­ri­als and dec­o­ra­tive ele­ments from dif­fer­ent eras are har­mo­nious­ly com­bined.

Ref­er­ences:
• M. Kris­tan, Adolf Loos Villen, Vien­na 2001
• B. Rukschcio, R. Schachel, Adolf Loos: Life and Work, Salzburg, Vien­na 1982
• Friedrich Otto Schmidt Archive

The com­pa­ny Friedrich Otto Schmidt was among the most exclu­sive and sig­nif­i­cant inte­ri­or dec­o­ra­tors of Vienna’s Grün­derzeit. Ini­tial­ly work­ing in the style of his­tori­cism, which was char­ac­ter­ized by the imi­ta­tion of old­er styl­is­tic forms, the com­pa­ny soon shift­ed its focus to the faith­ful repro­duc­tion of his­tor­i­cal mod­els, cre­at­ing a dis­tinc­tive design lan­guage. These style fur­nish­ings remain syn­ony­mous with the high­est qual­i­ty to this day. Through its par­tic­i­pa­tion in the reform ideas pro­mot­ed by the Muse­um of Art and Indus­try and under the influ­ence of Adolf Loos’ mod­ern design con­cepts, the com­pa­ny became part of the avant-garde of Vien­nese applied arts around 1900. The fir­m’s suc­cess was con­firmed through numer­ous par­tic­i­pa­tions in inter­na­tion­al exhi­bi­tions, includ­ing the Vien­na World’s Fair in 1873, the Mil­len­ni­um Exhi­bi­tion in Budapest in 1896, the Win­ter Exhi­bi­tions at the Impe­r­i­al Roy­al Aus­tri­an Muse­um of Art and Indus­try in Vien­na from 1898 to 1904, and the Exhi­bi­tion of Aus­tri­an Applied Arts 1850 – 1914, also held at the same muse­um in 1914.

The His­to­ry of Friedrich Otto Schmidt:
In 1858, Carl Friedrich Hein­rich Schmidt (June 29, 1824, Stral­sund – Octo­ber 22, 1894, See­walchen), who came from a Sax­on fam­i­ly of car­pen­ters that had set­tled in Prus­sia since the 18^th cen­tu­ry, decid­ed to move to Vienna.Trained as a mer­chant in Ham­burg, Schmidt moved to Prague in 1850 to work at the wall­pa­per fac­to­ry ​“Robert & Bhd. Sieburg­er.” From 1853 to 1857, he man­aged its Budapest branch. Like many artists and crafts­men, he saw great oppor­tu­ni­ty for pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment in Vien­na, the impe­r­i­al cap­i­tal under­go­ing exten­sive urban expan­sion, espe­cial­ly with the con­struc­tion of the Ringstraße.In 1859, togeth­er with Ger­hard Joseph Hubert Sugg (b. Novem­ber 27, 1832, Cologne), he found­ed the wall­pa­per busi­ness ​“F. Schmidt & Sugg” at Bischof­gasse 637 (today Roten­turm­straße 11) in Vien­na’s 1^st dis­trict.

In 1872, Schmidt took over full own­er­ship and renamed the com­pa­ny ​“Friedrich Otto Schmidt.“The com­pa­ny expe­ri­enced com­mer­cial suc­cess with the involve­ment of his eldest son, Otto Erd­mann Schmidt(October 4, 1854, Budapest – March 16, 1895, Vien­na), trans­form­ing into a ​“Tech­ni­cal Stu­dio for Inte­ri­or Dec­o­ra­tion,” offer­ing com­plete fur­nish­ings, includ­ing stuc­co dec­o­ra­tions and fire­places. Not only did the com­pa­ny become one of the most suc­cess­ful inte­ri­or dec­o­ra­tors of the sec­ond half of the 19^th cen­tu­ry, but it also played an active role in Arthur von Scala’s reform move­ment at the Muse­um of Art and Indus­try in Vien­na.

This move­ment sought to break from his­tori­cism and, fol­low­ing the Eng­lish mod­el, aimed to fos­ter a mean­ing­ful col­lab­o­ra­tion between art and crafts­man­ship. Soon, Schmidt moved away from his­tor­i­cal­ly inspired imi­ta­tions and instead focused on the exact repli­ca­tion of clas­si­cal mod­els, rang­ing from indi­vid­ual pieces of fur­ni­ture to entire inte­ri­ors. Schmidt’s pas­sion for con­tem­po­rary trends was also evi­dent in his pri­vate life. In 1874, his vil­la ​“Daheim” in See­walchen, Upper Aus­tria, designed by archi­tect Zin­ner, was com­plet­ed. There, he main­tained close friend­ships with artists, writ­ers, and musi­cians, includ­ing Hans Makart and Friedrich von Amer­ling. After Carl Friedrich Hein­rich Schmidt’s death in 1894 and the pass­ing of his eldest son Otto in 1895, his oth­er son, Max Her­mann Schmidt (August 11, 1861, Vien­na – April 1, 1935, Budapest), took over the busi­ness.

Max received his train­ing in the 1880s with inte­ri­or design­er Prig­not in Paris and the fur­nish­ings com­pa­ny Pal­len­ber­gin Cologne. He joined the fam­i­ly busi­ness in 1889 and became sole pro­pri­etor in 1894. Along with his broth­ers Carl Leo (Feb­ru­ary 20, 1867, Vien­na – May 15, 1942, Vien­na) and Hugo Wil­helm (Feb­ru­ary 2, 1856, Budapest – Feb­ru­ary 16, 1932, Vien­na), he reor­ga­nized and expand­ed the ​“Tech­ni­cal Stu­dio for Home Fur­nish­ings” up to the turn of the cen­tu­ry. In 1896, a sec­ond branch was opened at Waisen­haus­gasse 7 (now Boltz­man­ngasse) in Vienna’s 9^th dis­trict, in addi­tion to the orig­i­nal store on Roten­turm­straße. In 1897, a store was opened at Lipót körút 32 (now Szent István körút) in Budapest. By 1898, the busi­ness moved from Roten­turm­straße to the Baroque Palais Neu­pauer-Bre­uner at Singer­straße 16 in Vienna’s 1^st dis­trict. The premis­es at Waisen­haus­gasse 7 housed pri­vate apart­ments and stor­age rooms. Fur­ther branch­es opened in 1900 and 1910, at Bacher­gasse 5 in Vienna’s 5^th dis­trict and Eisen­gasse 5 (now Wil­helm-Exn­er-Gasse) in the 9^th dis­trict, although these were even­tu­al­ly closed over time.A par­tic­u­lar­ly pro­duc­tive col­lab­o­ra­tion devel­oped with archi­tect Adolf Loos, who worked close­ly with Max Her­mann Schmidt and inspired the design of the well-known ​“Ele­phant Trunk Table” (1899), which was used in var­i­ous home fur­nish­ings from 1900 onwards.

In addi­tion to Loos, the com­pa­ny also col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Vien­na Seces­sion. For exam­ple, it fur­nished the foy­er and secretary’s office in the Seces­sion Exhi­bi­tion Build­ing based on plans by Josef Hoffmann.Since 1907, the Palais Chotek at Währinger Straße 28 in Vienna’s 9^th dis­trict has served as the company’s head­quar­ters. The his­toric Renais­sance-style build­ing was ini­tial­ly rent­ed by Schmidt as a stu­dio in col­lab­o­ra­tion with archi­tect Lothar Abel (Feb­ru­ary 15, 1841, Vien­na – June 24, 1896, Vien­na), and was even­tu­al­ly pur­chased in 1904.After Carl Leo’s death in 1942, his son Erich Schmidt (Feb­ru­ary 27, 1910, Vien­na – June 14, 1980, Vien­na) and his wife Irene Schmidt, née Eder (July 13, 1910, Vien­na – June 21, 2001, Vien­na), took over the com­pa­ny. From 1968, their daugh­ter Irene Schmidt (b. August 31, 1948, Vien­na) served as man­ag­ing direc­tor, and her hus­band Klaus Lorenz (May 23, 1943, Scheibbs – Decem­ber 24, 2016, Vien­na) was autho­rized offi­cer (Prokurist).

Today, the com­pa­ny is man­aged by Irene Schmidt and her two chil­dren Irene Lorenz (b. Feb­ru­ary 15, 1967, Vien­na) and Claus Lorenz (b. March 15, 1966, Vien­na). Claus Lorenz also man­ages the Friedrich Otto Schmidt archive.

Source:​“Wag­n­er, Hoff­mann, Loos und das Möbelde­sign der Wiener Mod­erne,” pp. 147 ff.Artists, Patrons, Pro­duc­ers, Vol. 37,Editor: Eva B. Ottill­inger, Author: Dr. Ste­fan Üner, M MD