Aubock Butterfly
2010s Austrian Mid-Century Modern Floor Lamps
Brass
Mid-20th Century Austrian Mid-Century Modern Chairs
Iron
People Also Browsed
21st Century and Contemporary French Art Deco Table Lamps
Hide, Wood, Parchment Paper
21st Century and Contemporary French Art Deco Table Lamps
Hide, Wood, Parchment Paper
2010s French Modern Chairs
Oak
21st Century and Contemporary Mexican Mid-Century Modern Floor Lamps
Textile, Wood
21st Century and Contemporary American Mid-Century Modern Flush Mount
Brass
21st Century and Contemporary American Modern Side Tables
Iron
Late 20th Century Italian Mid-Century Modern Stools
Wood, Rope
2010s British Scandinavian Modern Lounge Chairs
Sheepskin, Beech
Vintage 1960s Space Age Lounge Chairs
Plastic
Vintage 1960s American Mid-Century Modern Lounge Chairs
Iron
2010s British Lounge Chairs
Sheepskin, Beech
21st Century and Contemporary French Modern Armchairs
Wood
21st Century and Contemporary French Art Deco Side Chairs
Wrought Iron
Vintage 1950s Austrian Folk Art Taxidermy
Antler, Wood
21st Century and Contemporary Austrian Mid-Century Modern Games
Iron, Nickel
21st Century and Contemporary Italian Modern Armchairs
Upholstery
Recent Sales
20th Century Austrian Mid-Century Modern Floor Lamps
Brass
Vintage 1950s Austrian Lounge Chairs
Early 2000s American Coffee and Cocktail Tables
Werkstätte Carl Auböck for sale on 1stDibs
In Vienna’s Neubau district, a beautiful Biedermeier townhouse has been home to the Werkstätte Carl Auböck for more than 100 years. Inside the workshop, where production continues to this day, countless objects line the shelves, walls, tabletops and desktops.
The Viennese artist and designer Carl Auböck II was one of the quirkiest and most delightful and collectible of modern designers. A rather odd duck in the world of decorative arts, he was a peculiar talent whose specialties included smaller desk accessories and tabletop pieces such as corkscrews, paperweights, letter openers, bookends and bottle stoppers. He rendered these pieces in a combination of metal — most often brass — and such elemental materials as leather, knobby wood and animal horn, creating forms that could be almost Surrealist, from hands and feet to keys, birds and amoebae.
As a boy, Auböck was precocious and artistic. He studied drawing and at the same time trained in the workshop of his father, Karl Heinrich Auböck, a popular maker of traditional bronze figurines and collectibles. In 1919, Carl II went to Germany to study at the Bauhaus, where he was a pupil of the progressive artist and theorist Johannes Itten. While the Bauhaus is most associated with the rigidly ordered, functionalist architecture of its directors Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the school was in reality a liberal, spirited place — a crucible for imaginative, playful and avant-garde art and design. It was this spirit that imbued Carl II’s work from the time he left in 1921.
In 1922 or ’23, Carl Auböck II returned to Vienna to help care for his ailing father, and he took over the business. He created the Werkstätte Carl Auböck and a legacy that earned his objects cult status among collectors. The business was passed on to his descendants, who run the atelier that is still in operation today. Today, objects designed by Carl II make up 90 percent of Werkstätte Carl Auböck’s production, joined by the creations of architect and designer Carl IV, his grandson.
Vintage Auböck designs have a special character, a patina that only emphasizes how much the pieces have been loved and used. Carl Aubock II’s small furniture items — leather- or caned-sling magazine racks; free-edge wooden side tables with tubular bronze legs; wicker serving trolleys with turned beechwood wheels — are elegant and purposeful. His bijoux desktop objects, library tools, ashtrays and barware pieces evince a kind of mirthful practicality. They seem to ask: “If you need a corkscrew, or a paperweight, or a candlestick, why not make it fun as well as functional?” And indeed, why not?
Find a collection of vintage Werkstätte Carl Auböck mirrors, seating, tables, decorative objects and other furniture on 1stDibs.