■ OVAL SIDE TABLE, MODEL 960/2, attributed to Josef Hoffmann, designed in Vienna, circa 1910; executed by D.G. Fischel & Söhne, Niemes (Bohemia), circa 1915, in ebonised beech finished in shellac, the oval top raised on four turned columnar uprights united at mid-height by an oval intermediate shelf of matching outline, the uprights rising from a pair of curved bentwood cross-stretchers joining the feet at the base, the whole belonging to the severe geometric vocabulary Hoffmann developed for the Jacob & Josef Kohn programme in the years following the founding of the Wiener Werkstätte.
Restored by a specialist workshop in Vienna; very good condition throughout, the ebonised surface refinished. Height 74 cm (29 ⅛ inches); width 60 cm (23 ⅝ inches); depth 48 cm (18 ⅞ inches). The underside retaining a partial paper label of D.G. Fischel & Söhne, Niemes.
Model 960/2 is catalogued in the Jacob & Josef Kohn sales programme at Vienna, the design attributed to Hoffmann and produced in variant sizes for domestic and café use. Following the expiry of Thonet's bentwood patent, D.G. Fischel & Söhne (founded 1861 at Niemes in Bohemia, today Mimon, Czech Republic) became one of the principal Bohemian workshops producing bentwood furniture in the Viennese tradition, executing models parallel to, and in some instances identical with, the Kohn and Thonet programmes until the firm's closure in the late 1930s. A Hoffmann coffee table executed by Fischel and dated circa 1915 is recorded in the trade; the present table belongs to the same pattern of cross-workshop execution.
Literature:
□ Jacob & Josef Kohn, Verkaufskatalog, Vienna, 1916, model no. 960/2, illus., with price 15 K 40 h.