Galerie Fledermaus

Recognized for his technically superior and beautiful metal patinations for tableware, Munich born Ludwig Vierthaler’s designs and metalwork caught the attention of Tiffany & Co., NY...

Recognized for his technically superior and beautiful metal patinations for tableware, Munich born Ludwig Vierthaler’s designs and metalwork caught the attention of Tiffany & Co., NY...

Recognized for his technically superior and beautiful metal patinations for tableware, Munich born Ludwig Vierthaler’s designs and metalwork caught the attention of Tiffany & Co., NY...

Recognized for his technically superior and beautiful metal patinations for tableware, Munich born Ludwig Vierthaler’s designs and metalwork caught the attention of Tiffany & Co., NY, for whom he worked in the mid-1890s. 1906 proved to be a decisive year in his career. Though Vierthaler had left his position as the Director of Design at J. Winhart & Co. earlier that year, examples of his work for Winhart were shown along with collaborative work with Eugen Ehrenbock at the Bayerishe Jubilaums-Landers-Ausstellung in Nuremburg - for which he received a gold medal - and at the Deutsche Kunstgewerbe-Ausstellung in Dresden -for which he received a silver medal. He and Ehrenbock formalized their partnership in 1907. Vierthaler later expanded his metalwork output to include jewelry and lighting design as well as figural and ornamental building decoration design. A member of the Deutscher Werkbund...

Attributed to Ludwig Karl Maria Vierthaler for J. Winhart & Co. The silver markings on the underside of this bowl indicate that it was manufactured by J. Winhart & Co. for whom Vier...

Created while a lead designer for J. Winhart & Co., Ludwig Vierthaler’s cicada themed copper vase showcases the design principles which he developed at J. Winhart in the pre-war years, where emphasis was placed on craftsmanship and the characteristics of the material itself. The vase’s ambiguous quality and use of allegory also shows his uncanny understanding of the dual nature of German life at the time. On the one hand, under Kaiser Wilhelm II, Germany was asserting herself strongly in the Weltpolitik through alliances with other central-European powers and in making grand plans to grow in military strength. With hindsight, Vierthaler’s vase is all the more remarkable for his prescience in the twilight of an empire. By presenting a cicada, he evokes a conundrum. Is this cicada a strong adult, newly emerged from a long dormancy? Or is this the cicada...

The undulating bumpy-textured octopus tentacle gracefully curling along and over the bowl’s folded rim is balanced by the rigid tension of the spider crab. The orange-red copper surf...