Josef Zotti (1884–1953) Seating Group, Vienna 1911

Doc­u­ment­ed in ​“Wiener Ausstel­lung öster­re­ichis­ch­er Kun­sthandw­erke (Saal 28), Wien. Öster­re­ichis­ches Kun­st­gewerbe­mu­se­um (7. Novem­ber 1911 – 4. Feb­ru­ar 1912).” (Vien­nese Exhi­bi­tion of Aus­tri­an Arts and Crafts (Room 28), Vien­na, Aus­tri­an Muse­um of Art and Indus­try), see his­tor­i­cal pho­to depict­ed below, as well as in the book ​“Josef Zot­ti architet­to e design­er 1882 – 1953. Architekt und Designer”

Large Seat­ing Group con­sist­ing of a Two-Seat Bench, two Arm­chairs, and a Rec­tan­gu­lar Table. The fur­ni­ture was pro­duced in 1911 by the Prag-Rud­nik wick­er­ware man­u­fac­to­ry from turned wood with straw weav­ing. The table was most like­ly pro­duced in a rec­tan­gu­lar form at the client’s request.

​“The archi­tect Josef Zot­ti has cre­at­ed unique and high­ly inter­est­ing pieces of fur­ni­ture that demon­strate the ver­sa­til­i­ty of woven straw. In a cer­tain sense he revives an almost extinct craft. The frames of the chairs are made of pol­ished maple wood, while the back­rests con­sist of woven straw. These straw-uphol­stered chairs are excep­tion­al­ly com­fort­able and pos­sess an equal­ly exquis­ite style.” Thus the mag­a­zine The Stu­dio com­ment­ed on and char­ac­ter­ized Zotti’s ​“Café-Restau­rant Loge,” which was pre­sent­ed at the Win­ter Exhi­bi­tion for Aus­tri­an Arts and Crafts and attract­ed con­sid­er­able inter­est among experts.

With this work Zot­ti depart­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly from his ear­li­er designs for Prag-Rud­nik, in which rat­tan had been the defin­ing fea­ture and had influ­enced both the for­mal and tech­ni­cal solu­tions. Here he com­bined a strict­ly geo­met­ric struc­ture of turned, black-pol­ished wood with seats and back­rests made of woven straw. Zot­ti gave this ensem­ble — con­sist­ing of an arm­chair, a sofa, and a side table — a rig­or­ous design in which the turned wood­en ele­ments serve as the only dec­o­ra­tive fea­ture.

The final mod­el, which was exhib­it­ed and lat­er includ­ed in the sales cat­a­logues of Prag-Rud­nik, was prob­a­bly pre­ced­ed by a pro­to­type. In the 1912 year­book of the Eng­lish mag­a­zine ​“The Stu­dio” and in the pre­sen­ta­tion of Josef Hoffmann’s archi­tec­ture class, the turned rods of the struc­ture appear thin­ner and less rhyth­mi­cal­ly bal­anced. The fur­nish­ings of the ​“Loge” also includ­ed cur­tain fab­rics pro­duced by the Vien­nese firm S. E. Stein­er & Co. after Zotti’s designs (see cat­a­logue raison­né no. 36), as well as light­ing fix­tures by Lud­wig Grandy.

Josef Zot­ti (1884 – 1953)

Josef Zot­ti was an Aus­tri­an design­er and archi­tect whose work emerged from the intel­lec­tu­al and artis­tic milieu of ear­ly twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry Vien­na. He stud­ied at the Vien­na School of Arts and Crafts under Josef Hoff­mann, one of the lead­ing fig­ures of Vien­nese Mod­ernism. Hoffmann’s teach­ing — char­ac­ter­ized by for­mal clar­i­ty, struc­tur­al rig­or, and the inte­gra­tion of art and craft — had a last­ing influ­ence on Zotti’s approach to design.
Although Zot­ti lat­er spent most of his pro­fes­sion­al career in Graz, his Vien­nese train­ing remained fun­da­men­tal. His designs reflect the prin­ci­ples asso­ci­at­ed with Hoff­mann and the Wiener Werk­stätte — geo­met­ric restraint, func­tion­al coher­ence, and mate­r­i­al refine­ment — trans­lat­ed into a dis­tinc­tive and mea­sured per­son­al lan­guage.

Lit­er­a­ture:
Josef Zot­ti architet­to e design­er 1882 – 1953. Architekt und Design­er, pp. 34 f., 88 f., 130.