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The company history of Portois & Fix spans from the building of the Ringstraße Boulevard to the late twentieth century. The
exhibition focuses on the years before 1900 and the beginnings of the new century, when Portois & Fix, writing design history,
congenially executed furniture designs by Otto Wagner, Max Fabiani, Koloman Moser, and Josef Hoffmann.
Around 1840, the furnishing of a room was not left to cabinet-makers alone. The design of a living room called for the collaboration
of a variety of craftsmen and trades. These ranged from carpenters making the floors, windows, and doors, painters, and stove
fitters to bronze workers supplying fittings and lamps and upholsterers, who were also entrusted with covering the walls with
fabrics or paper and sewing curtains and bed draperies. Since the textile furnishings of a room were particularly important for its
overall impression, these craftsmen increasingly fulfilled the role of interior
decorators.
Joining forces in 1881, the two decorators August Portois and Anton Fix founded an interior decoration company that offered complete
furnishings for houses and flats. Both had been successful at international exhibitions and could rely on contacts to the Viennese
Court and to France.
In 1899, Otto Wagner, the probably most important architect of the beginning twentieth century in Vienna, designed the entire urban
rail network of the Vienna Stadtbahn and all its stations, including the Hofpavillon in Schönbrunn, built specifically for Emperor
Franz Joseph. Giving an account of
its opening by the Emperor on 16 June 1899, the Neue Freie Presse also dedicated some lines to how the station was furnished: “The
utmost skill and carefulness have been applied for furnishing its interior, which is, of course, decorated in today’s most modern
style. Only Austrian and especially Viennese firms were involved in the making of this arts and crafts jewel. […] the waiting room
in lavishly gilt mahogany [was executed] by Alex[ander] Albert […], the furniture comes from Portois & Fix.”
Oriented toward
classicist models, Otto Wagner’s light seating furniture designs clearly differed stylistically from previous works by the company
Portois & Fix, which realized architectural designs here in this very prominent place for the first time. With this commission, the
traditional decoration firm became part of what became renowned as the Wiener Moderne (Viennese Modern Age).
With more than 700 employees, Portois & Fix numbered among the biggest companies in Vienna around the turn to the twentieth century. Its furniture was exported to Germany, Russia, Turkey, Romania, Serbia, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Egypt, and it ran branch offices in Paris, Bucharest, London, Berlin, WrocBaw (Breslau), Cologne, Milan, Torino, Karlovy Vary (Karlsbad), Budapest, Bombay, Cairo, and Constantinople.
In 1899, Max Fabiani, a close associate of Otto Wagner, was entrusted with planning the new company headquarters on Ungargasse 59/61, in Vienna's third district. In its choice of materials, the young architect's first work drew on Wagner's solution for his Majolikahaus on Wienzeile. Extending from Ungargasse to Arenbergpark, the grounds accommodated the company's entire production: carpentry and gilding facilities, an upholstering wing, a sewing workshop, an engine house, and a place for keeping exotic woods. The actual business premises on Ungargasse comprised three floors: ground floor, mezzanine, and first floor, furnished in a sequel of different styles: "Empire, Louis XVI, Louis XIV, then English, then modern." In terms of typology, the new building related to contemporary department stores, especially with its salesroom and the gallery above it. The layout reminds us of the Viennese department stores Herzmansky (1896/97) and Gerngross (1902/04), which, for their part, call to mind Paris Belle Epoque buildings of this kind such as the Galeries Lafayette. If Max Fabiani had constructed the house in the center instead of in the suburbs in 1900, the scandal caused by the almost unornamented tiling would have equaled the outrage Adolf Loos saw himself confronted with when he built his house on Michaelerplatz exactly ten years after.
Parisian Esprit and Viennese Modernism
The Portois & Fix company
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| Duration of the Exhibition |
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July 8 through September 1 2008 |
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| Opening Times |
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Mon, Tue, Wed and Fri
8 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Thu 8 a.m. to 5.30 p.m
Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
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| Information |
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www.ottowagner.com/museum
T +43 1 534 53 DW 33825
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| Entrance |
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Main Banking Hall:
Free Entrance to the Special Exhibition!
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| Museum WAGNER:WERK |
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Entrance Fee: Euro 5.00
Euro 3,50 reduced fee for
students, senior citizens and groups
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| Free entrance |
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Bank customers of BAWAG P.S.K. on exhibit of customer card
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| Curators |
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Eva B. Ottillinger
Hofmobiliendepot - Möbel Museum Wien
Monika Wenzl-Bachmayer
WAGNER:WERK
Museum Postsparkasse
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| Catalogue |
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Pariser Esprit und Wiener Moderne –
Die Firma Portois & Fix
Mit Beiträgen von Eva B. Ottillinger,
Peter Haiko, Ulrike Scholda und
Bernadette Decristoforo
105 photographs,
116 pages, EUR 25,00
Available at the Museumsshop and at
www.ottowagner.com/shop/bücher
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| WAGNER:WERK - MUSEUM POSTSPARKASSE - Georg Coch-Platz 2, 1018 Vienna |
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