Maker’s Story
The Viennese workshop of Carl Auböck, exists now for over 120 years and for four generations. Currently produced by Carl Auböck IV in the original Auböck Werkstätte in the 7th district of Vienna using the same exacting standards, high-quality materials, original moulds and techniques of his legendary grandfather remains among the last of it’s kind. Auböck’s design career was long and varied, reaching it’s pinnacle of prestige at the Triennale di Milano in 1954, where he received four gold medals in recognition of his iconic work.
A company famous for it’s modernist designs, Carl Auböck II (1900–1957) dreamt up and derived from abstraction, the knowledge and skills within his small family workshop, which became the birth place for ideas from the Bauhaus and now translated in to three-dimensional brass objects. The archive today includes more than 4,500 designs.
Carl Auböck II was born in 1900, after working as an apprentice bronze worker and engraver for the family business in the early 1900’s, he went on to be a student of Johannes Itten, a Swiss expressionist painter and designer, at the Bauhaus in Weimar. Once graduated he took over his father’s workshop and in the early 40’s developed a very particular style which many consider modernist, becoming the face of Austrian modernism.
Carl Auböck III took over in 1957 and started making objects in new materials, including horn and wood, expanding the collection and making a platform for experimentation. His son Carl Auböck IV has been instrumental in preserving the quality and craftsmanship in the workshop which today remains among the last of its kind.
Images courtesy of Werkstätte Carl Auböck.
