Karl Hagenauer was an influential Austrian designer in the Art Deco style. Goldsmith. Carl Hagenauer founded what became the Werkstätte Hagenauer Wien in 1898. His oldest son, Karl, who would eventually assume leadership of the family business, enrolled at the Vienna School of Applied Arts at age eleven. There he studied with Josef Hoffmann and Oskar Strnad and created designs for the Wiener Werkstätteart collective. After wartime service in the infantry, he resumed his training and qualified as an architect. He joined the family business in 1919. Hagenauer was responsive to the changein public taste influenced by the popularity of the Vienna Secession. His stylized animals and whimsical creatures handcrafted in brass had broad appeal in domestic and American markets. Some were useful, such as mirrors, cigar cutters, ashtrays, candlesticks, bookends, hood ornaments and lamp bases. Other larger sculptures in wood and metal were purely decorative. Hagenauer's work was presented at the 1925 Paris Exposition, where he won a bronze and a silver medal. He designed the company’s trademark “wHw” and registered it in 1927. The first catalogue to use the trademark dates to 1928, the year his father died and Hagenauer assumed leadership of the business. While Hagenauer was the principal designer of everyday objects, his younger brother Franz specialized in sculpture. The company later also produced furniture, chiefly designed by Julius Jirasek. Hagenauer's work found an avid American market partly through the efforts of New Yorkgallery ownerRena Rosenthal, who featured the Josephine Baker sculpture in a 1935 window display. Rosenthal's patronage was critical to the post-war success of the Werkstätte Hagenauer; the hostilities caused a delay of several years in her payment for a last container of products shipped in 1938 and the subsequent change in exchange rate was very advantageous to the Austrian craftsman, supporting rebuilding efforts.
Awards
1923 Prima Mostra Biennale Internazionale delle Arti Decorative, Monza
