Richard Riemerschmid
Leading proponent of the rational or functionalist branch of Munich Jugendstil, and later founding member of the Deutscher Werkbund, Richard Riemerschmid is today seen as one of the most important German designers of the twentieth century. Riemerschmid’s work encompassing designs for furniture, textiles, metalwork, ceramics, glass, and all facets of interior decoration, is praised for its remarkable combination of originality and practicality. Born in 1868 in Munich, Riemerschmid was a prolific painter and graphic artist before he found his calling as a designer in 1895, when he created his first piece of furniture. Ensuing the Munich Glaspalast exhibition of 1897, known as the first Jugendstil exhibit, in which Riemerschmid participated with paintings as well as furniture, he co-founded the United Workshops for Art in Handicraft. The aim of this collaborative, business-oriented affiliation of designers, manufacturers, and merchants was to produce and market the work of the recent Jugendstil movement. Riemerschmid’s collaboration with the Dresdner Workshops, founded by his brother-in-law Karl Schmidt, led to the revolutionary Maschinenmoebel program of 1906. The ready-made, reasonably priced, machine-made furniture represents a groundbreaking step toward a modernist understanding of applied arts in the twentieth century.
