Letters in metal

Bruce7 Apr 2007

This morning I was sorting through some photos and came across this shot of the gate at Friedrich Neugebauer's house in Austria. Pretty cool, eh? He and Edith designed their house and built most of it themselves in the 50s and early 60s, and kept adding on as they had more kids -- 6 boys in all! The house is in a little farming neighborhood on the side of a mountain, above the village of Bad Goisern, in the Salzkammergut ("Sound of Music" country) of Austria.

Friedrich never told me exactly when he designed this but I'm guessing it's from the 60s. He had a local welder make it up for them, and bartering something for it, i'm sure. The left side says NEUGE and the right BAUER, with the initials of their first names up on top along with the cross.

(This was one of those rare times when it actually helps for on-camera flash to make the foreground brighter than the background, thus separating the metalwork from everything behind it.)

blank7 Apr 2007#

Fabulous.

sayerhs7 Apr 2007#

so cool. reminds me of weiner werkenstate.
shreyas

Bruce7 Apr 2007#

Well you aren't far off the mark: Friedrich studied with Rudolf von Larisch in Vienna in the late 1920s/early 1930s, and RvL had been very much involved with that whole scene. Larisch taught in several important schools in the first three decades of the 20th c. and designed for the Wiener Werkstätte. He had his students make letters out of hammered metal, neon, etc. and there was always a very high emphasis on craft as well as design.

Linda Cunningham7 Apr 2007#

Damn, I want a country estate so we can have something like this for our drive.... ;-)

Just gorgeous, Bruce.

interrobang_lp12 Feb 2012#

Thanks for posting this Bruce.

Speaking about future house projects on the wish list, I just went to show a friend. Leafing through "The Mystic Art..." and not finding it, we hit the web, and lo and behold.

mjb

hrant12 Feb 2012#

Very cool.

BTW Michael, I don't know about reviving
old fonts, but reviving old threads rules.

hhp

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